


Wild at Heart

by MissMaxime



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, Romantic Comedy, Semi-Public Sex, Slow Burn, Vaginal Fingering, beth and rio at a wedding, no kissing yet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2020-10-20 02:27:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20667803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMaxime/pseuds/MissMaxime
Summary: “Is this were you tell me to deal with you and let her go?”Rio spits onto the floor, the smell and humidity of the place really getting to him now. “Hell no, puta shot me two times in the chest,” he spits, eyes laser focused onto Beths.Beth notices a slight shift in his look, but doesn’t respond to it. “Maybe if you hadn’t given me a reason I wouldn’t have shot you at all!”---Or, a story that travels through S1, S2 and continues into the potential of S3. A canon compliant post season 2 finale fic.





	1. PART ONE

# WILD AT HEART

### CROCODILE

After a few seconds of consciousness Beth realizes it might not just be her raging headache that is disorienting her so bad. The air around her is thick, warm and heavy and carries a distinctive smell of rot. She tries to move, but it’s pretty clear that the tie wraps around her wrists and ankles aren’t budging any time soon, and moving them only cuts the hard plastic deeper into her limbs. Her vision is still impaired, but she listens carefully and she can hear a few birds chirping, and the lazy sounds of water moving in irregular paces. 

And she hears someone else very close to where she’s seated, judging by their muffled breath. 

A few feet in the distance she hears an electric door slide open, plastic barriers being pushed aside, and footsteps coming towards her. “Wakey, wakey!” a man’s voice chuckles. And she barely has time to react as a bucket of ice water is dumped in her face – and all her senses immediately go on high alert. Her skin breaks out in goosebumps, and she tries to cough up some water that had shot up her nose, without use. They quickly remove her blindfold and she tries to make out the figures in front of her, as well as her surroundings. 

When she sees the abundance of tropic plants around her a sense of familiarity overcomes her: she’s been here before. But at daytime and with her kids. Yet she doesn’t really have more time to think about it because one of the man in front of her grabs her by the chin and forces her to watch at the person tied up next to her.

“How’ve you been, Miss Marks?” a familiar voice drawls. She tries to look up, but this persons crony is holding her in a vice-like grip. He saves her the trouble of stretching her neck by walking into her line of vision. 

And truthfully, it takes her a little while to place him. Dressed in - what nodoubtly is a very expensive - dark red suit, polished black shoes and a purple tie she’s certain he’s more extravagant than the last time they met. Which must have been like a year and a half ago. He runs his hand through his shoulder length black hair, let’s his eyes gaze over her, and then cracks a smile. 

“Oh, you’ll have to excuse my manners,” he says, while he reaches out and tears the duct tape of Beths mouth. She winces and bolts back into the chair, tearing from the grip. She sucks her dry, chapped lips in, wetting them to soothe the ache.

She clears her throat and coughs up some water. “Mr. Salazar,” she croaks. “You know, if you wanted to close a deal you could have just called,” she tries, putting on her sweetest voice. Goosebumps rattle her skin again, as she only now realizes she’s tied in her underwear and tank top. Salazar watches her reaction to her current situation, indulging into her uncomfortableness. 

“Obviously we couldn’t risk you carrying a weapon of sorts.”

_Obviously_, she sighs mentally. 

Her eyes shoot to the bolted down bench a few feet away; she can make out some of her jewelry and her gun. And there’s some other, shiny familiar things--

“Also, I brought a friend,” he gestures to the still-hooded figure. 

“Well, I have already met two of them, I’m sure--” Beth stops in her tracks when the other crony pulls off the hood from Rio. He seems conscious, sorta, he’s badly hurt with a swollen, bleeding gash on his left cheekbone. Unsurprisingly, Rio gets a fresh bucket of ice in his face as well. His eyes shoot open like he’d seen a ghost, and when he lays eyes on Beth that is what he might as well think – her white skin gives off a sickly glow under the yellow lights of the reptarium.

Salazar pulls up another chair, turns it the wrong way around – the back of the chair facing Rio and Beth – and sets himself down, leaning with both arms on the backrest. His menacing gaze darts between the two people before him, before he breaks into a hollering laugh. “So,” he starts, “consider this your annual performance interview. I know, I know,” he ponders, waving a hand in midair, “It’s a little later than I had intended but you,” he looks at Rio, “were taking a leave of absence – months of them, without notice, I might add. And you,” his eyes go to Beth. “Well, let’s just say that those home-made cookies didn’t suffice to stock the supermarket, did they?”

Beth glares at him. “If you would have provided--” she gets interrupted by Salazar putting an index finger onto her lips. 

“_Shush, shush, shush_,” he singsongs belittling. 

Rio moves in his chair, still gagged. Salazar notices and indicates to one of his goons to remove the gag. 

“Is this were you tell me to deal with you and let her go?”

Rio spits onto the floor, the smell and humidity of the place really getting to him now. “Hell no, _puta_ shot me two times in the chest,” he spits, eyes laser focused onto Beths. 

Beth notices a slight shift in his look, but doesn’t respond to it. “Maybe if you hadn’t given me a reason I wouldn’t have shot you at all!”

Salazar is beyond amused. “Ahh, and here I thought you partners.” 

Beth huffs and straightens in her chair. “I don’t need him.”

Rio shakes his head, laughing in a low pitch. “You sure ‘bout that, momma? Seem to recall you being very needy,” he says, licking his lips.

That inflames a white-hot anger in Beth’s chest. “You really want to get into that? Now?”

“Seems like as good a time as any, Beth.”

Oh.

_Ohh._

_We’re lying_, she thinks. And now she gets it. 

“Children..,” Salazar interferes. “As much as I’m enjoying your lovers quarrel, we have more important business to cover. Like how you gonna get me my money.”

“How much?” Beth pitches in.

Rio clears his throat. “’Bout ten mil, am I right?” 

“Ten million dollars?” Beth shrieks. And now she starts to get how she vastly underestimated just how far Rio’s empire reaches – she knew it wasn’t just the laundering, but this goes beyond what she had ever imagined. “But his boys took over his business while he was… wasn’t there.”

“And while I appreciate the gesture of donating their revenue as a token of not being able to fully provide me with my part of the deal, it’s time to collect Miss Marks. Or do you need me to remind you who I signed that deal with?” he says, raising an eyebrow. 

Beth catches Rio’s look, barely noticing the slow shake of his head. 

No. No, Salazar did not need to remind her of that deal at all. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

### CONTAINER

“Get in, ma.”

Beth was cutting the rose bushes in her front yard. With her raggedy old jeans, apron and dirty gloves, not really ready to go actually anywhere. And her face gave Rio just that message – but it doesn’t seem to do the job, because he kept looking at her expectantly from the open window of his car. 

“I have plans,” she huffed, and wiped her hands as clean as can get on her apron. Reluctantly she walked towards him, annoyed that he didn’t even bother to get out to talk to her. If you can even call this talking, instead of ordering her around. 

“I know,” he said, and smiled knowingly at her. 

Her eyes narrowed. “What do you know.” 

Rio put a hand in the front pocket of his shirt to extract an very familiar envelope, one she had received a few weeks ago herself. With a bunch of reluctance she snatched it from him and opened it. “You are hereby cordially invited to – No friggin way,” she exclaimed annoyed, and throws the card back into his car. “How did you even get that?” she hissed at him. 

“Your fancy ass schedules.”

She crossed her arms and leaned closer to him, trying very hard to block the neighbors view from him. “I can’t take you.”

“Why not?”

“Those people all think I’m happily married to Dean!”

“Are you?”

“I..Yo—Well, that’s none of your business.”

“C’mon, ma. They already know you’re bringing some guy that’s not carman. Wanna spend a weekend explaining why you alone there?”

She didn’t really want to go at all anymore. Her old roommate Wendy was getting married again, only now to this insanely rich businessman in Quebec. Wendy for sure wanted to put her first marriage to shame and she probably invited everyone she knew. Beth and her rarely talked save for a few birthday cards and Facebook message from time to time. But with all that was going on Beth really wanted a weekend away from Detroit – even if it was with a bunch of people she barely knew. Because if she had to hold up any more conversation about PTA-stuff she for sure would jump off a cliff. “Why do you even want to go?” she sighed, throwing her hands up.

Obviously the question he was waiting for, judging by his face. 

“Crime.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeh you heard me the first time.”

And as much as she hated to admit it, that did peak her interest. This shutdown was numbing her in the worst way possible. “My flight isn’t until tomorrow.”

“Change of plans, darling. We driving.”

“We are now, are we?”

“Yes. Now go get your bags, we’re leaving.”

“What makes you think I packed already?” Rio raised an eyebrow at her, Beth in turn raised her hands in defeat at his look, not even believing herself. “Why am I even trying this excuse.” She made her way back to the house. 

A mere fifteen minutes later Beth stepped into the passenger’s seat. She put on a simple black wrap dress and some wedges. Rio eyed her up like he always does. 

“You got a funeral first?”

“If you keep annoying me I might have to arrange one later.” 

Rio stayed silent for a little bit, but then burst out laughing. “Riight,” he replied, dragging the syllable.

Beth observed the inside of the car, taking in her surroundings. His car is ridiculously clean, but then again, he probably has some place to clean it for him. She can’t imagine him carrying a vacuum down from his house to do it himself. Does he even have a house? He’s probably more of an apartment guy. 

They exited the Detroit suburbs and headed for the highway. She reached down and zipped a square shaped, colorful box open, and grabbed two bottles of water. “Want some?” she said, while offering one to Rio. 

Rio looked down at the bag. “What’s that.”

“A cool box,” she answered, completely unfazed.

He smiled. “Got some juice boxes in there as well?”

“No, but if I had known you want--” she stopped speaking when she saw his smile creep up more and more. She smacked his shoulder, and he feigned hurt. “It’s a twelve hour drive, you jerk! I’d like to stay hydrated.” That’s when she noticed that this is not the way she and the girls drove to Canada the last time. “Where are you going?”

“We’re being followed.” He said. Like that explained it all.

“What?” Beth said, as she tried to turn around in her seat. Rio pushed her back roughly. Beth can’t help but pout a little, and leaned back to try to see the other car through the rearview mirror. She could see some kind of silver sedan tailing them, keeping a decent distance. “How do you even know it’s following us?”

“They probably tracking ya phone.”

Beth paled significantly at that statement, then quickly calms. “Well, I have an alibi to where I’m going,” she concluded smugly. “So if you just stop at the next gas station, hide in the trunk for a bit and let me drive I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

At first he wasn’t sure she was kidding until she cracked a smile. 

“We’re going over Erie to Buffalo to Syracuse. I’m not taking a risk on those other borders.”

“That’s like three more hours.”

“Good thing you have your cool box then.”

A good amount of hours later, though not as much as Beth had anticipated – apparently getting a speeding ticket wasn’t a concern to Rio, they pulled into Buffalo. Beth had never been there before, even though it wasn’t that far of a drive apparently. They were parked close to the river, and Beth could see the falls in the far distance. Evening was slowly falling, but it was still plenty light outside. 

Beth was so captivated trying to see the force of nature that she barely noticed Rio pressing up behind her, circling his arms around her. She stiffened in his grip, ready to blow a gasket about his sudden intimacy, but he leaned forward, lips close to her ear. “The car is back,” he whispered softly. 

Beth had to contain herself with all her might to just turn her head a little towards him, capturing a glance of a parked silver car right over his shoulder. “So now what?” she sighed, already sensing where this was going to.

Rio turned her around in his arms, looked at her just long enough for it to feel awkward, and stole a quick peck on her lips. “Guess I wasn’t just hitting it.”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------

### CONCEPTION

Beth parked at the location Rio send her through her burner phone. She hadn’t been at this place in a long time. When she was growing up, this used to be one of the highlights of her childhood; an immense swimming paradise. She remembered that it had closed down over fifteen years ago, and even that had been a good few years since she last visited. And now that she took in it’s surroundings she got that families would probably not be that keen to take their kids to a desolated place in the middle of some woods and fields right by the lake. 

From the outside it was obvious it hadn’t been used in a long time. The walls, a massive glass dome, were heavily green streaked from lack of cleaning. Surprisingly enough every single one of them seemed to be whole. Even the large pink ‘Paradiso’ sign, accompanied by what used to be a neon-lighted flamingo, were very prominently there above the entrance comically cave-like decorated entrance. 

When she got out of the car the cold immediately hit her, slashes of eerie wind striking her in the face like tiny lashes. She wraps her scar around the bottom of her face and took big strides towards the side door Rio told her to take. Her hand reached out to take the ledge, and the door swung open surprisingly easy, she’d at least expected a rusty creak. 

The door fell into the frame with a loud metallic click that resonated through the abandoned building. Beth could make out some light a few doors away and she let the orange colored beacon be her guide. The front lobby and sales counter had obviously not been touched some time; thrown over chairs, broken lights and a thick layer of dust that made Beth’s skin crawl. But her transition into the locker rooms made no sense at all: it was all squeaky clean. Kind of amazed she progressed through into the tropical part of the swimming pool. It was still like she remembered; swirly patterns of white tile made out the fun part of the paradise, highly decorated with fake palm trees, rock piles and not very culturally appropriated hula-girls and cannibals with bones through their noses. Contrary to most places she visited again after childhood that just seemed tiny, the pool was absolutely massive. Empty of water, what used to be rapid waterways formed paths through the dome, and this part was also very clean. 

Beth followed the light into the sports pool area, four really large rectangles with diving stands at one side of the pools, and a tall diving board at the other end. This pool room was equally clean and huge as its processor. Rio was waiting for her beneath the board at the pool furthest away from her, leaning against the deep end wall, scanning his phone. A large sports bag laying on the ground beside him, there’s also a rickety table close to him with a familiar paper bag set atop of it. A large spotlight in the corner powering a bright orange light being the only light source. Now that her eyes were used to the dark, and the sky outside was clear, the light of the moon and stars provided more than enough for her to make all this out. But she was sure that light would be more than welcome later.  
“I’m here,” she simply said, standing at the high end of the pool. Her voice echoing through the spacious area, even though she didn’t say it that loud.

Rio looked up into her eyes, demanding dark orbs she had seen before. “Get in here.”

“Are we doing this again?” she asks, as she descends into the shallow end of the pool. When she gets down and turns around it’s obvious he isn’t here to mess around. He’s going to teach her. And even though she knows he’ll get riled up by it, she slowly makes her way towards him, pretending that it’s the height of her heels on the descending slope, but that wasn’t actually an issue. 

He doesn’t take his eyes of her as she walks towards him. Reaching behind him, he takes out his golden gun, and truthfully that machine seems a bit advanced for her inexperienced self. He waits patiently until she gets close to him and she takes the gun from his hands. 

Something’s off. “It’s unloaded.”

Rio’s mouth twists into a cheeky smile. “Good catch,” he says, extracting the clip from his pocket. 

Beth takes the clip and seemingly without much effort puts it into the gun and loads it, she looks up at Rio, catching a brief glimpse of his mildly surprised expression. She smiles a little “I watched a YouTube video,” she shrugs. 

Rio snatches the gun from her and shoots a hole in the lower circle of the ‘8’ right in front of them, the loud bang resonating around the room of the empty pool. He hears Beth yelp when he pulls the trigger, but she seems to quickly compose herself when he lowers the gun. “YouTube teach you that?”

Beth shakes her head slowly. 

Rio eyes the bag on the table. “Go get yo’ lady gun, this shit’s too heavy for you.”

Even though that comment offended her a little, she made her way across to the table and took the gun out. She loaded it the same way, carefully stacking the bullets into the magazine before putting it into the machine. 

“Don’t forget to muzzle it,” he adds, when he notices she intents to walk back to him. 

She grabs the attachment piece and attaches it to the gun while making her way towards him. “Afraid the neighbors going to hear?” she asks. 

“Nah,” he says, looking around the room. “Know it doesn’t look like much from the outside, but this place is a money maker.”

Beth looks around, dumbfounded. “Doing what?”

Rio looks back at her, twinkle in his eye. “Legit business, mami. Hardstyle festivals, indoor, selective crowd, but they come in from all over the States. And beyond.”

“Hardstyle?”

“I’ll take you some time. You’ll hate it.”

“Love how you keep teaching me things I don’t know,” she quips, faux-enthusiastic. 

“Come here,” he says again, but much more lighthearted. “And take that coat off, it’ll just hold you back.” Beth complies, folding her coat and putting it onto the table, and it greatly amuses him but he decides not to get into that for now. 

“You still didn’t tell me why I need the silencer.”

“You wanna make waves, baby?”

“I’d rather not shoot anyone at all, you know that.” When he refrains from answering her she sighs, throwing her towel into the ring. “No I don’t _wanna make waves. _”

He motions her to get closer. “So ya don’t.”

“I just gotta handle it, right?” she phrases it as a question, but she knows it’s just fact. And the fact that he just doesn’t answer it gives her enough of an answer. 

“Aim for the six,” he says.

Beth complies, aiming the gun at the hole of the number six. She really got into those YouTube videos and takes the stand with her legs that most of those vids said. She aims the way those vids said. And she holds her arms out those vids said. “How’s that teaching going?”

Rio comes up to her from behind and grabs her hips, tilting them a little back, improving the vast stand of her feet. And she knows she should approach this clinically, but she cannot completely. But her train of thoughts is immediately interrupted by him moving his hands from her hips to her head, moving it just a few degrees to her right. “You a bit shortsighted, right?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer – _did he check out her reading glasses? _. She focusses back because his arms immediately migrate to her arms. He traces her left arm with his. “Relax this one, it’ll catch the blowback,” he tells her. 

And in the moment, she feels pretty confident about this whole thing. Because it feels like a game, and she can play a game. So she aims, his hand on her left shoulder. And she shoots, the blowback hurts a little, but the sound is way less from the first shot she heard tonight. Bless that silencer, if she had been in an apartment below it could have been someone dropping some dishes.

Her aim wasn’t spot on though. She hit just outside of the broad strikes of the metro tiled ‘six’ on the wall. Which, truthfully, she personally thinks isn’t that bad. Because they’re still ‘bout thirty feet away from the target. And the worst part is, is that it ignites a new kind of thrill that she immediately tries to repress. Because shooting? Was really not on her bucket list. But this private session, with him, unfortunately might have made that list by now. 

“So how you shot Dean,” she can’t help asking. 

He stays silent behind her for many more moment than she had anticipated. 

“Could have gone either way,” he replies. 

She wants to ask all the things: Did you know there was a chance he’d live? How did you shoot so accurately? Do you have some kind of professional training? If not, how did you learn how to fire a gun? What did you want from shooting him? Why didn’t you just kill me? 

But all those thought were drowned by: “Try again,” that he just casually drops. 

So she aims again, all his advice taken in consideration. She checks her feet, her eyes and her arms. And she fires again.

And if this were darts she wouldn’t have hit bullseye, but she’s hit the green ring around it. And she feels pretty damn proud and smiles at him. 

He doesn’t seems impressed though. 

“That was pretty close,” she says firmly, expecting some kind of praise for doing a good job. 

He’s unimpressed. “No hit though.”

“Well, I hit an artery didn’t I?”

“You want them to suffer?” he bounces right back. 

She resigns “No.”

“So we go on.”

Beth turns to him, looking him in the eye. “How long do we go on?” she asks, the same kind of exportation in her eyes when she asked him if he was going to kill her. 

“Until you finish,” he plainly responds. 

She’s both hyped by this lesson, but also tired beyond measure by the thing he requests from her. How can he deal with this? It’s not like she ignores that this is reality, she knows, it’s just that she does not want to know. But it’s one of those reality’s she pushes to the back of her mind because she doesn’t want to deal with it, because if she deals with it, it might become her reality. And she’s not sure she wants that to be her reality, the reality of being her own judge. The reality of maybe becoming a murderer. There must be another way. Right?

“So how do I shoot someone without killing them?” she just asks upfront, because there’s no way around it really. 

He contemplates for a minute. “Why?”

“Well, maybe I don’t wanna just kill someone?” she shrieks, much more loaded with emotion than she wants, but honestly it’s justified to how she feels. 

“Look I know you late into the game,” he starts talking – and he sounds kind of annoyed.

But she interferes. “I’m not asking you to spare me. Tell me how I can be a boss without being a murderer.” 

She knows he doesn’t want to tell her, but his eyes tell her enough. Burning into hers with no emotion, and all the emotion at the same time. 

“You wanna shoot without kill?”

Yes. Yes that is what she wants. 

“Can you teach me that?”

He smirks at her just a little. “Yeah, we can get into that. As soon as you shoot the bullseye right, than we can differentiate.”

So Beth aims a second time, without his touch on her this time, but his body still close. And she hits the belly of the six now. They refrain from talking for too many seconds until Beth’s pride gets too much of her, and she turns around beaming. Finding his proximity much closer than the thought, but she’s not thrown by it. 

“So now what?”

He cracks a smile. “Yeah, you gonne have to give me a little more than one lucky shot, ma.”

She’s ready to explode and tell him that this was all skill, but they’re shaken up by the metallic sound of the side door falling back into it’s frame, the sound resonating through the entirety of the pool. She hears a few voices chattering, making their way towards them. And Beth looks at Rio, who seems strangely not just unphased, but more… annoyed? 

A female laugh hollers through the hallways, and at the far end a caramel skinned woman appears in the doorway. The maybe three to four other people with her continuing through to the tropical part of the pool. And when she approaches Rio and Beth even more it’s all the nineties flashbacks. Her long, white-bleached hair framing her face in tiny braids. Complimented by her white tracksuit, white crop top and bucket hat, finished off with her lilac Spicegirl shoes. “Hermanito!” she bellows, as she sets her dark brown eyes on Rio. 

Beth looks back at Rio. Who is now completely facepalming away from this entire situation, mumbling something incoherent in Spanish under his voice. 

The woman jumps right into the deep end of the pool, nearing them at a rapid pace, all smiles – but maybe a tad bit menacing in a way she has only seen on Rio’s face. “Ohh, did I disturb your date? I’m so sorry,” she says to Rio – obviously not being sorry at all. 

“I’m not his date!” Beth blurts out. 

“You not Elizabeth?” she asks, corking an eyebrow.

And Beth is glad that it’s still pretty dark here, because she feels her blush spread to all the places. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met?”  
“You’re right. I don’t think we have,” she replies, elbowing Rio in the chest. Who apparently now is beyond his initial drawback and removes his hand from his face. He clears his throat. 

“’Lupe, this is Elizabeth,” he starts reluctantly. “Elizabeth, this is Guadalupe, my sister,” he finishes, with what appears to be the emotion of slowly dying on the inside. 

Beth holds out her hand, smile as bright as the light of a thousand suns. “It is so nice to meet you. I can honestly say that Rio,” and Lupe quickly glances at Rio at that, highly amused, “has never mentioned you before in any way.”

Lupe takes her hand with a matching smile. “I’m glad to inform you that it has been completely the same on my end. The only reason I know your name is because the other day I tried to answer his phone when you called.”

“I don’t remember talking to you.”

“Yeah, that because I ripped that phone from her death grip before she could answer,” Rio pitches in. He directs his attention to Lupe. “What’ya doing here?”

“Had to hook up the new stage builders. They couldn’t make it tomorrow, and I need this shit done asap else we won’t make it ‘till the next gig,” Lupe voices in that all too familiar annoyed tone she has heard Rio use a million times. “Maybe if you told me about your date--”

“Not a date,” Beth chimes in again. 

“I’d have let you know I was coming,” Lupe finishes, smiling contently at her brother.

Something in the other room clatters loudly onto the floor. “Better go take care of your business,” Rio tells her. 

“Oh, I will. Nice to meet you, Elizabeth,” Lupe says. “And I’ll see you Sunday, _Rio_,” she pointedly adds before she rushes away into the next room and barks a _ ‘What the fuck is going on here? _’ to her guys. 

“So, that was…” Beth starts.

“Some crazy ass rollercoaster?” Rio provides. 

“Interesting,” Beth deliberately speaks. 

They stay silent for a little, only sounds being the voices at the other part of the pool. 

“Class dismissed?” Beth pipes in, looking at Rio. 

Rio eyes her up. “You ready then?”

Beth huffs. “Not at all. You think shooting a wall is the same as shooting a person?”

“Well, I didn’t bring a rotten egg. But I can holler for Lupe if you really want to shoot a bitch up.”

Beth is mortified at first, but when she looks into his mischief filled eyes she breaks into a laugh. “Wait. Did you just make a joke?”

He cracks, if only for a few seconds, before he composes himself. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Beth’s mood suddenly turns like a leave, and she sags down onto the table, fiddling with the gun in her hands. “I’m not who you want me to be,” she says, looking at the ground kinda sad. 

Rio moves towards her. He reaches out and lifts her chin to look her in the eye, his dark orbs meeting her turmoiled pools of blue. Affectionately he strokes the hair from her face with his other hand. “Not yet,” he says.

And that is probably the scariest this he has ever said. 

He extracts from her aura swiftly, grabbing his things, throwing the bag over his shoulder. “Meet me here Sunday afternoon. We get you ready, ma.”

She slumps her shoulders, tired of the riddles. “What does that mean?”

“Guess you just gotta show up, huh?”


	2. PART 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I could not ignore the new episode titles haha. So the Beach one is woven into this, coincidentally I already had something concerning cards and ptsd.

# WILD AT HEART

### CONTAINER

_“So now what?” she sighed, already sensing where this was going to._

_Rio turned her around in his arms, looked at her just long enough for it to feel awkward, and stole a quick peck on her lips. “Guess I wasn’t just hitting it.”_

She was too stunned to immediately react, a hot flash of something shooting through her chest, but she woke up from her initial shock quickly when he lightly smacked her on the hip.

“Get in the car, we’re getting dinner.”

In the short drive to whatever Rio had in mind for food Beth called in with Dean about the kids. He was with his mom so she was pretty sure it’d be fine, but she couldn’t remember the last time she had been apart from her kids for over three days. _“Are you sure you gonna be fine on your own there, Bethie.”_ Beth could just _feel_ Rio containing a laugh at that nickname so she turned away from him, staring out the car window as she continued her conversation. “I won’t be alone, Dean, I know people there. It’ll be fine. Oh, and send me some pics from the kids at the waterpark.” She ended the call and slowly turned back to Rio, who wasn’t letting on anything.

“We’re here,” he said, blissfully ignoring her stare of doom. 

Beth looked in front of her to see the utmost ridiculous looking expensive restaurant. All tall windows, most of them facing the Niagara Falls. Even from the outside she could see a variety of both vintage and modern chandeliers cover the ceiling. The light cascading from it making the restaurant seem to be sending out warm orange beams. She had to take a few seconds to compose herself. “Should I, like, roll around in diamonds to get a golden ticket?” she spoke deliberately. 

Rio snorted. “Ya know, as much as I’d love to see that, you fine as it is, ma.” He got out the car and walked to her side. He opened her door and held out his hand for her to grab. She reached out for it, still reluctant about this new turn of events. “You with me now, no stopping at some highway diner.”

Beth smiled stiffly. “Just so you know, I’m only going with this to sell the lie.”

Rio handed the valet his car keys. He reached out to grab Beth’s hand, which he noticed she accepted without any hiccups. “Pretty rich coming from someone who uses lies to sell.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said innocently as they got on the elevator to the second floor. Beth looked into the mirror that covered ceiling to floor of one side and smoothed down her dress. It was a bit crumpled from sitting in the car, and she frowned trying to flatten it. 

Rio smiled at that, noticing her discomfort. “Don’t worry ‘bout it,” he said, squeezing her hand a little. 

When the door pinged Rio led her to the stand of the maître, from his confident stride it was obvious that he had been here before today. An attractive Asian man in a sharply cut white suit greeted them at the stand. “Mr. Ruiz, how nice to see you again. It’s been a while. And who is this gorgeous specimen?” he asked, while he led the way into the restaurant. 

Beth wanted to answer, but Rio cut her to it. “T’is Victoria, my fiancée.” 

“Are you serious?” she blurted, but Rio held his hand up. 

“I know, I know. We said we wasn’t gonna tell people yet, but Liam here doesn’t know any of our friends. And it feels. _Just. So. Good._ To say it out loud. Don’t you think?” he said joyfully, eyeing Beth. 

“Well, congratulations to the both of you.” 

Beth’s chest became instantly splotchy with small red stains that spread fast into each other and down her cleavage. Her expression was more cross than embarrassed though. 

Liam pulled out a chair for Beth and she sat down, composed herself as she felt her own superpower rising to the surface, and faced him smiling. “I would love to show you my ring, but I’m afraid he messed that one up a bit. I guess he doesn’t know me as well as he thought.”

Rio took place on the opposite side of the table and locked eyes with her. He entangled his fingers together. “Oh, I think I do.”

“Sometimes that confidence gets the better of him,” she sweetly smiled, turning her attention to Rio again. In the meantime her blush had retreated as fast as it had come. 

He leaned back in his chair, eyeing her up, challenging her.

“I mean, we’ve only just got engaged and look where he brings me already. It’s hard to live up to this exquisite place. Unless you’ve got something even more impressive planned, honey?”

“Oh, I got something impressive just for you.”

A deep crimson blush spread across her chest when the words hit her. 

“Let me get that menu for you,” Liam said, excusing himself.

“Don’t overplay your hand, darling,” he replied triumphantly. “Not too many people in my circles gonna be swayed by your cards.” 

Beth watched as Liam returned and gave them their menu’s. Rio ordered them some water and a bottle of wine she could not for the life of her understand because her French began and ended with _”Bonjour, je m’appelle Elizabeth.”_ His snobbish ass seemed to do just fine, on the other hand. He had opened his menu already, scanning the dishes. 

“What did you order?”

“Puligny Montrachet.” 

“I heard that. What is it?”

“White wine. It tastes like flowers. You’ll love it.”

Beth was going to make a remark about not needing him to order something for her, that she was a big girl and would do fine on her own thank you, when she noticed that none of the dishes had any prices next to it. Furiously she dropped the menu to the table, looking Rio straight in the eye. “Rio we can’t eat here,” she hissed, “I can probably put all my kids through college for what this costs.”

He looked back at her, unimpressed. 

“We can’t leave. Somethin’s gonna go down here later, can’t miss out on it.”

“You’re closing a deal here?” she replied, still fuming. 

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Why can’t you just tell me these things upfront?” she sighed.

“Got my reasons. You’ll understand, I promise,” he said reassuring. “Now pick some dish, I’m starving,” he added grudgingly, obviously tired of this conversation. He closed his menu and put it on his plate, folding his arms across his chest, waiting for her to decide on what she wanted. 

Beth was going to take her damn time though. 

Rio looked at his phone and got up. “You know what, you order for the both of us,” he said, eyes glued to his phone, before returning them to hers. “Starters and mains,” he added, before stalking away, phone to his ear. 

Liam returned to their table, bottle of wine in his hand. He was a bit wary when he saw that Rio was missing. 

“I’ll taste it,” Beth offered sweetly.

“Of course, Miss Victoria,” Liam said as he uncorked the wine gracefully before pouring a small layer into her glass. 

Beth swirled the wine around in the glass, like she had seen posh people on cooking shows do, before taking a sip. And goddammit, this damn wine was like an angel was peeing onto her tongue, it was divine. “That’s great, thank you so much,” she replied composed. Liam continued to pour the wine into both hers and Rio’s glass. 

“I’d like to order,” she said. “For the both of us,” she added, when she saw Liam’s eyes drift to Rio’s empty seat. 

“Of course. What can I get you?”

“As a starter we’re going to have the oysters. And for main I will have the steak tartare and he’s going to have the pan fried sole,” she said, as she handed back the menu’s. Might as well profit from this situation now that they’re in it, right. 

Rio came walking back from his phone call and sat down. Liam looked at him expectantly, holding their menu’s. 

“I’m sure my lady ordered all the right things,” he said, and Liam nodded and took off again. 

“More business?” Beth asked, trying to play it off way less interested than she actually was. 

“Something like that.”

“You know, after abducting me from my house—”

“Abducting?”

“Blackmailing me into going taking me to a wedding of _my_ friend.”

“Have you even spoken to that chick in years?”

“The point is!” she interjected quickly. “You’re just intruding into my life like this. Forcing me to accompany you to whatever crime scene you’re visiting. You know, you could have just asked!”

“Could’I’ve?” he asked, with what appears to be some genuine interest. 

“Yes! But apparently I’m nothing more than the convenient shiny, white purse you need with you to take that neck tat through the Canadian border,” she finished. 

And that’s when he broke and actually laughed. He palmed his face and dragged his hand down until he was palming his chin. “Damn, you a trip, ma.”

“I’m not trying to be funny,” she said in defense, looking around to see if anyone around them had actually witnessed her fallout. But everyone in this busy place seemed to be minding their own business. Guess it was just her being all worked up. 

They stayed silent for a few minutes, the only sounds between them being the low chattering of the other guest, the clinking of cutlery and the low piano music. Beth was looking at Rio, who was looking through the window at the falls, contemplating what he was going to do. 

“Yeah, I need you to boss up before I take you to those other things I got lined up for our romantic getaway,” he spoke, before looking at her again. 

While Beth let those words down in, a small red-haired girl brought in the oysters she ordered. They both cordially nodded and thanked her before she went away again. Beth took a sip of her wine. 

“It’s good.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. 

“The wine. It’s really good.”

He took a sip as well. “Told ya.”

“So, if I’m gonna be what you want at your thing,” she said, “what are you going to be at my thing? Because this is going to be all rehearsal dinners, walkthroughs, long ceremonies and all those nightmares.”

“I’ve had my fair share of quinceanera’s and weddings. I’m sure I’ll manage,” he said, taking an oyster and gulping it down. He hummed appreciatory. 

“Oh, I’ll sure you’ll charm your way through all the guests. But who are you there? How do I introduce you to them? Are you my boyfriend?”

He snickered. “I could be the lonely dad charity case you picked up at PTA.”

“Again. Not being funny.” Beth took the chance to eat one of the oysters. Which was a mistake, a very big mistake. And she couldn’t grab her linen napkin fast enough to spit the sea creature into it as decently as possible. 

Rio observed her with great amusement. “You know, you could have just slid it back into the shell and told them they fucked up crackin’ it.”

Beth’s eyes glared at him with all the rage. “Well, you wanted a starter,” she hissed under her voice. She took a big swig of her wine, drowning the gulp of sea slush she just welcomed into her mouth. 

Meanwhile Rio’s took another oyster and made a big show out of his appreciative hums that he was enjoying this course very, very much.

“I’m just going to say we’re dating,” Beth decided. “She hasn’t met Dean anyway, anything could be going on. Just go with that.”

After Rio finished the plate, the same waitress came to collect their plate and filled their wine up from the bottle. 

“So, now you have me in your rolodex to be your side piece. How’d you do this trip before?” she asked curiously. 

“You ain’t my side piece.”

“Wrong emphasis.”

“I didn’t do these trips myself. But something new came up.”

“Another _something_, huh?”

“A business opportunity,” he explained, not exhilarated to leave this something as another _something_. “I need you to be my fiancée who’s going to be the face of my front business.” 

“You want me to be Victoria?” she shot back.

He grimaced. “No, I want you to be Elizabeth.”

“Oh, really. So what’s Elizabeth getting out of this?” she asked sternly.

“If we both have the patience to put up with each other for another nine to twelve months I’ll give you five million dollars.”

That was too much for her to process in just a few seconds, so she let something out between a scoff and a laugh, quickly clapping her hand over her mouth as she heard herself make that sound. 

Fortunately the Liam and waitress returned with their main courses. Rio watched carefully as Liam deboned his sole at the table. And Beth spoke out her likings to the waitress – who she now knew was called Jill – prepared her steak tartare. It seemed like a lifetime, but it only took a few minutes before it was just the two of them again. And especially Beth crashed down into reality again. 

“I’m sorry. Did you just say _five million dollars_?”

Rio took a bite of his sole, and grunted in approval. “Great choice,” he hummed while he enjoyed his dish. “It’s a long term investment. So, you in?” 

Too thrown to even begin to answer this question – _because really, wasn’t she in already?_ – she just took a bite of her dish. And it was equally divine as the wine was, really dragging that first bite out as she stared out through the window at the falls, like he had done before. 

“I’m going to need some container up front,” she said. 

“What do you want?”

“500k.”

“Done,” he said resolutely. 

“No funny money!” she warned. 

“You’ll get it when we get back to Detroit. Monday evening. You good with that?”

Beth held out her hand, and looked him in the eye. 

Without letting his gaze slip, he slid his hand into hers a little too slowly, but without hesitation. “Deal?”

“Deal,” she replied. 

They finished up their main course, and Beth excused herself to visit the ladies room. And truthfully, she also needed a bit of a breather. Not just this new deal he had just thrown onto the table like it was nothing, but also just a few minutes away from his presence would do her good. Even if he was just _there_ he was exhausting her with his words, and his attitude. 

After doing her business she looked at herself in the mirror. Normally she would have never set foot in a place like this looking like she just came from a PTA meeting – or a funeral if Rio was to be believed. She just adjusted her make-up a bit and went out to join Rio at their table again. 

When she sat down the look Rio gave het was just unsettling. Not menacing or angry – no much worse – he seemed to contain a giant burst of excitement and bit his lip as he a sound much like a muzzled fuse was set off close to them. 

A little behind her the pianist started to play what she instantly recognized as ‘Time of my life’, but much louder than the pitch he had played in before. 

Rio had stood up, and held his hand out to her. Everyone in the restaurant was looking at them now, the chattering and sound of cutlery no longer drowned by the piano music, but completely silent by the moment Rio just created. 

And as if on autopilot Beth let Rio lead her next to the piano. He was still holding onto her one hand with his, the other one settling on the small of her back. He leaned forward, his lips close to her ear. “Something’s going down, aight?” he whispered slowly.

And he meant that literally, as mortification downed as a cold splash of water seep into Beth’s chest when she saw him descending onto one knee. The world seemed to go by her in slow motion and she could only speechlessly watch as Rio extracted a small black box from his pocket and opened it, showing a rose-gold ring with a diamond to Beth. 

“Victoria,” he said, shaking her immediately back to now. “Sorry ‘bout my fuck up with the first ring. I should have listened to my gut, not your sister.”

That got a few laughs from the crowd. Beth smiled nervously at them, barely keeping it together.

And Rio, he was never going to live her down on this moment, judging by his face. 

Beth was pressing her limps firmly together into a smile to not let the actual embarrassment show. She nodded rapidly at him, to the untrained eye looking as if she was just too taken aback to say the words. 

Rio smiled, slid the ring onto her finger, and got up to pull her into a hug.

Beth circled her arms around his shoulders and leaned her mouth close to his ear. “I’m gonna kill you for this,” she hissed. 

Rio actually chuckled. “Give it to me good, mama.”

*

They finished up their meal, and with this fiasco behind them Beth had no problem having Rio pay for this dinner. Besides, he still owed her that flight she had payed up front. He threw his bomber jacket onto her shoulders while they walked into the parking garage, obviously he noticed she was feeling the cold. 

Beth intended to walk to his Cadillac, but when she saw him push the remote of his lock a blue car beeped a few feet away. She looked at him, face full of questions. “I had some guys switch things up. Don’t worry, you bags, it’s all there,” he said. 

Beth stilled in her track, looking pissed off. “That’s it? You just going to act like nothing happened? What was that?!”

Rio spun on his feet, looking thoroughly annoyed. “Who gonna walk out of there when some guy’s on his knee for a woman?” he barked at her. 

_And. Yeah. That was… right,_ she moped, as she crossed her arms across her chest. She was just, tired. “You’ve got to stop leaving me out of your plans. I can’t help you if you keep me in the dark all the time.”

“What you gonna do? Put a ring on it?” he smiled. 

She mirrored his smile. “Thought you wanted me to boss up?”

He answered her by pulling the door open on the passengers side. 

“They’ll still be tracking my phone,” she said, as she slid into the seat. 

“Wasn’t that your alibi in the first place?” he smirked, as he closed the door. 

Beth couldn’t contain herself to just check for a second if her suitcase a dress pack were still there, but everything seemed right. “Where we going?” she asked, as she put his jacket on top of her like a blanket. 

Rio plopped down into the chair, and put the key into the ignition. “Syracuse,” he replied briefly. “I booked a hotel. It’s close to midnight,” he said, as he noticed her sleepy face, “It’ll be a little over an hour with my driving style. You can sleep, it’s fine.”

“Maybe I will,” she murmured, as she got comfortable. And it took a few minutes out of the parking garage before she drifted to sleep. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------

### CONCEPTION

Beth stands on one of the artificial islands in the middle of the room, eyes scanning the room, highly focused. It’s daytime and even though it’s mostly cloudy, every area in the glass dome is fully visible in the natural light. Her hands are grasping the pearl handle of the gun she has pointed at the ground. A soft tapping of rain starts and Beth opens her eyes. 

The crackling of a sound system starting up fills the room. “You ready, mama?” Rio’s voice drawls through the speakers that are attached on different point on the wall. 

Beth looks up at a mirror-glassed office high up near the ceiling, she guesses it used to be the surveillance post when the pool was still in use. She nods, and doesn’t avert her gaze as she points the gun straight ahead of her. She can’t see what Rio’s doing but she hears a surge of electric power kickstarting something in the room. And she’s kind of glad it’s daytime, because if watching all the Hulugirl- and cannibal figurines start up and start to move isn’t a straight out of Chucky nightmare she doesn’t know what is. 

And just as she’s about to ask what the hell is going on she hears the familiar gritty sound of him activating the microphone. 

“Nosebone, two o’clock.”

Beth turns a few degrees to her right, sees the doll spinning around in a big ‘ol kettle over a fire, and fires. She’s pretty bummed when she just misses her target by an inch or two. 

“Don’t forget that evil eye of yours,” he comments, and she rolls her eyes at that her back turned away from him. 

Beth purposely doesn’t reply to him, afraid she might lose her concentration. So she exhales, points the gun at Mr Nosebone again, and follows its shaky movements. And when she pulls the trigger now the bullet goes straight through its head, the ceramic exploding into a thousand pieces. Even though everything in her being screams to cheer for herself, she contains her joyful feeling as she knows Rio isn’t done with her. Not by a longshot. 

After that Rio follows up fast with pointing out new targets to her, and Beth is quick to react to them. Not all are a hundred percent accurate, but she confidently follows up when her first shot only breaks a flower from the hula girls skirt, only for her second one to completely obliterate the figurine. 

“I need to reload!” Beth exclaims when she pulls the trigger and no bullet comes out. Deaf by the adrenaline, Beth extracts new bullets from her pocket. 

A second later a hole is blown into the stone island she’s standing on, and Beth almost falls over from the shock. She looks up only to see Rio standing on the balcony of the surveillance bunk, holding his golden gun. 

Her face flushes with rage. “What the hell are you doing!” she yells at Rio, who’s smile twists into something wicked. 

“Please take your damn time, sweetheart. I’m sure the bad guys will wait,” he babies her, as he aims again at where she is standing. 

And in an act of reflex, Beth jumps off the stone island, and ducks behind a wall which she is sure he can’t reach from his angle. Crawling away behind it for a few feet she finds a nook to take shelter. Reaching into her pocket again, she fumbles with the bullets and gets angry with herself for a few seconds, but pulls herself together while she manages to reload her gun. She’s panting rapidly, but she puts her scarf over her mouth, afraid the clouds of warm exhale will betray her position.

Beth reorients herself, and when she looks behind her she sees the nook is actually an arc covered by fake vines, and she can see Rio still standing on the balcony through the natural peeping holes. He doesn’t seem to have her in sight, even though he is looking somewhat into her direction. So Beth positions herself and aims for a window close to where he’s standing. And her adrenaline rush probably enhances her aim, because when she pulls the trigger the bullet hits the window right in the center. 

“What the fuck, ma!” Rio says, jumping back into the security office in reflex. He gets back out quickly and looks at the window, and he looks actually kind of impressed for a change. The genuine laugh that hollers from his throat has a warm sound to it, instead of the distant one that usually bellows from him. 

“That’s some A+ shit,” he says, as he traces one of the cracks on the glass. 

Beth emerges from behind the wall and makes her way to the stairs leading to where Rio is standing. She frowns as she sees the window. “Why didn’t it shatter?” she says as she ascends towards him. 

Rio smiles as he turns towards her. “Got them glass custom fitted.”

“What does that mean?”

Beth let Rio take her hand into his as he leads her into what she believed what the security watchtower. But when she watches him turn on the light this does definitely not seem like that’s the case. Sure, there are some monitors with security footage on the side she just shot, that also overlooks the entirety of the tropical pool. But when they continue into the room it extends not only into the sports part of the pool, overlooking that entire arena, it also has a stairs leading to either the roof or another floor. 

The interieur doesn’t match anything she has seen in this building before. It’s all sleek, modern lines. But with a shiny black bar, brass accents and red chairs and couches, which make the whole of it look kind of tacky to be honest. “This your sky box?” she asks. 

“Yeah, you could say this my sky box,” he repeats, amused by her choice of words. “You like it?”

Beth clears her throat. “Well, it’s… something.”

Rio keeps looking at her, with that knowing look in his eyes. 

She sighs. “It looks like a strip club,” she conceits.

That just makes his eyes glimmer. “Oh, it’s a club alright,” he says, as he drags her further towards the back. When they turn around the corner it’s clear that this darkroom has a lighter side to it as well: the back is still dominated by black and red, but it has large floor to ceiling windows that look out over the lake. 

Beth untangled her hand as subtly as she can from his as she stalks towards the window. “So what is it then?” she asks, as she takes in the view. 

“I prefer business club,” he voices from behind her. 

Beth turns her head towards him. “This where you invited me to earlier this week?” 

He raises an eyebrow. “Unless you wanna pump it out on the dancefloor?” he shoots back at her. 

Beth scoffs nervously. “I think I’m good on that.” She returns her gaze back to the window. The lake looks calm, it’s surrounded by woods that are turning from green to brown now, but still shield this piece of nature from the rest of the world. It’s getting later in the afternoon, and the sun is dropping, coloring the cloudy sky with some orange streaks. 

Rio stalks to the place next to her right. “I need you to get your house in order, though. Our Canadian friend will be there.”

Beth fumbles with the gun in her hand, but when she looks up at Rio she musters up all her confidence. “I will.”

“Yeah, you will,” he speaks deliberately. And she can hear it’s not just a confirmation, it’s an order. “Can’t afford mistakes on this one.” And this time she doesn’t just hear him saying this to her, but also to himself. She doesn’t jump on that hunch though, afraid that she might got that nuance wrong. 

“What about Turner?” she asks. “Can’t really cap _him_.”

Rio sniggers. “Yeah, he’s got a real hard on for you, right?”

“That’s not funny,” Beth snaps at him. And truly, it’s not. In hindsight she can see why he might be annoyed with her, doesn’t want her to get away with the robbery, because sure he is a cop and he probably want justice come out on top. But she _helped_ him, even if that did not turn out that good in the end. For either of them, really. “I don’t know why he’s so obsessed with me.”

“All I know it’s bad for business.”

Beth finally turns her head to him, looking him in the eye, infuriated. “Well, what you want me to do about it? I tried being the innocent housewife,” he just laughs at that, “I tried being his ally,” that just seems to spark more joy in him, “And being his enemy hasn’t gotten me anywhere too. So what do you want me to do? Please enlighten me, because I’m running out of goddamn options!”

Rio looks away from her, staring into the distance. She just keeps looking at him with a face full of questions. “I thought you were going to teach me?” she asks. 

That makes his attention turn back to her. “Yeah, I know this ain’t yo M.O., but this is gonna be a long con.”

“How?” she asks, both offended and interested.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

### CROCODILE

Beth feels the sunlight on her skin. It’s both warming her from the inside out, and burning a little from the outside in. She’s in a lilac sundress she can’t remember buying, and a light breeze is blowing her hair from her face. She hears children laughing and running in the distance, but the sounds are somewhat distorted, she still feels like she’s in her own bubble. She feels everything, and she feels nothing. 

Even though the air around her feels warm and inviting, she can’t help but notice the goosebumps appearing on her skin. The hairs on her arms are raised, and what she thought was a calm demeanor feels cracked when she looks at the sunset. 

Clouds of thunder are rapidly invading the warm colors of the sky that she had been looking out to. And it doesn’t just invade her vision, it crawls under her skin in all the wrong ways. She wraps her arms around herself, stroking her upper arms with her hands as she watches the sand around her feet starting to pick up with rapidly increasing winds. And the sea in front of her goes from gentle ripples to increasing angry waves crashing onto the wet sand. And every wave that that crashes is bigger and more brutal than the one before that until she actually feels a strike across her face, stinging her cheek beyond the surface of her skin.

Beth opens her eyes, looking back at Salazar, who’s still perked onto his seat. _Well, so much for finding her beach in this situation,_ she sighs internally. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, in a weak but still the most sweet voice she seems to be able to muster up, “You were saying?”

Salazar just laughs out loud, looking at Rio. “And you hit that? Seems like a broken record to me, my man.”

“I’m not broken,” Beth replies. And maybe it’s angry, and gritty, and not that confident. “And we have your money,” she adds. She tries to shift in her seat, even though the leeway is next to nothing, but she tries to straighten her spine as much as possible. “Would you like that in cash or goods?” she asks. 

Salazar seems impressed. But again, he seems like the guy who will look like he is impressed if she put on a sexy pose – and honestly, he has been before. But then again, she also knows that that is probably the low bar in this situation. She has learned enough for the past few months, unfortunately. 

Salazar barely looks at her before returning his gaze back to Rio. “Cash or goods, my man? You good on that?”

“Hey!” Beth belts, “I can get you it. Why you looking at him for? Haven’t I been supplying your warehouses for the past months?” she says, giving him a challenging look. “Who’s been meeting with your contacts and closing deals for the past months? I am. I know where your investments are. And if you get rid of me you will take down all those contacts with me.”

Now that does get both Salazar ánd Rio’s attention. And the latter one’s look is telling her to not take this too far, but she feels like she knows what she’s doing. “Yeah, I can get them to do their drops early within a few hours. So then you’ll have your money, and we can still be in business. Because our business works, and you know it,” she says confidently, looking Salazar in the eye. 

Salazar seems to be seriously considering this option, being very dramatic at rolling his eyes and scratching his head. “So why don’t I just call them from your phone, get my cut, and offer them a better deal for future business?”

Beth composes her innocent housewife smile. “Cuz they like me, and they don’t know you. Why wouldn’t they start their own business? I mean,” she says, actually kind of relaxing into the chair. “Seems pretty shady going into business with some weird guy they don’t know if they can start their own. We don’t deal with idiots on this level, I’m sure they can figure things out between themselves eventually. They don’t need you.”

Rio looks like he is pretty satisfied with that, even though he doesn’t show it that much.

Salazar contemplates her statement. “So why you didn’t deliver till now?” he replied right back to Beth now. 

“You barely replied to my texts or calls. How was I supposed to deliver?” Beth asks, actually kind of offended. “You never gave me a chance.”

Rio croaks up at this. “You should’ve. Wouldn’t have showed her off to you if it was just some piece, ya know. How long have you known me?”

“Long enough,” Salazar immediately says. But it’s obvious he is not too committed to that statement. Guess crime doesn’t go a long way. 

And even though Beth now knows that her old life of being a mom of four and being a PTA high ruler is more of a life killer than an enlightenment, it seems like a decent place to be by now. Because her lip is bleeding, and her body is getting all the colds even though her surroundings are a nasty kind of humidity that should keep her warm in a wrong way. And she does not really know where things are going from now, because she hasn’t really had Rio’s advise for a larger chunk of the time he has been absent. But she thinks, considering the circumstances, she has been doing alright at least. 

“I can call some people to deliver in, what, 18 hours, and they will be good for it,” she says. “And we will be good for you in the future. But you will have to discuss terms with me,” she says, both confident, but resigning.

Salazar looks at Rio, and he just nods. But he’s in Beth’s viewpoint, so she knows he’s talking to her through his body language more than to Salazar. 

“So what you want,” Rio asks. “What’s your container?”

Salazar just dramatically laughs at that, which riles both Beth and Rio beyond reason. “What’s your price,” Rio croaks.

“Five million tonight,” Salazar states without emotion. “The other five within the next week.”

Beth and Rio exchange a look. “Yeh take my phone,” Rio provides. “Call Mr. Cisco, he’ll hook you up if you let him talk to me or her.” 

Salazar takes Rio’s phone and takes the conversation away from the both of them, and they have a weird kind of alone time again. And it’s filled with all the wrong times of silence, but the presence of Salazars guys definitely adds to that. 

“He’s good for it,” Beth says.

“I know,” Rio replies. 

Salazar returns shortly and dumps his body back to the chair the way he did before, while scans their faces. “So your guy says he’s gonna be here in like half an hour with half the money,” he says, echoing their earlier statement. 

“Told you he was good for it,” Beth immediately fires. “And we’re tired of being ignored, even while we have been supplying you with venues you couldn’t imagine were there in the States to begin with, and we have contacts all over the world, and you know it.”

“Yeah our flexible hours got you sufficient money over what you were expecting,” Rio provides. 

“That’s all nice and sound. But how you gonna get me my additional five million?” Salazar asks. 

And Beth and Rio look at each other, both a questionable look in their eyes like they want to, but they don’t really know how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, so probably going to weave spoilers into this story, obviously. Even though that was not the intention, but I'm just going with it. Hope you all like it!


	3. PART 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Rio and Beth get closer, we're also getting closer to closing deals and discovering our true nemeses in each part of the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter kind of ended up a bit bigger than I had initially aniticipated, that's why it took a little longer. I guess you could say that in each part we'll see Beth and Rio getting closer, in one way or another.

### CROCODILE

_“That’s all nice and sound. But how you gonna get me my additional five million?” Salazar asks. _

_And Beth and Rio look at each other, both a questionable look in their eyes like they want to, but they don’t really know how._

“So,” Salazar quips, entwining his fingers while he twiddles his thumbs. Beth has seen this side of him before when they had met at Rio’s business party, when he pulled that other stunt. It’s not just that he obviously wants to intimidate them in a ‘force-this-deal-onto-you’-way, he seems to be actually enjoying this in a disturbing, menacing way. He directs his attention at Rio. “How would you describe your greatest accomplishment of the past year?” his tone of voice reads amused, but the look on his face is flat except for the glimmering sparks shining in the dark depths of his pupils. 

“Are you serious?” Rio replies annoyed. _This is a mistake, a big mistake,_ is all that rapidly runs through Beth’s head. Her eyes shoot directly at Rio, trying to find his to send a silent warning. But his eyes stare defiantly at Salazar, challenging him like this is some kind of game. 

Salazar bursts out laughing, giving one of his boys an amused look. And Beth feels her stomach turn at the vibrato of Salazar’s laughter. “You believe this guy,” he says, pointing at Rio. His boy mirrors his boss’ laugh, but in a stupefied and lopsided way. “Show him how serious I am,” Salazar follows up, menacing look in his eyes. 

Both Rio and Beth tense in their chairs as Salazar’s boy approaches them. And it’s silly, but Beth wishes she could clasp her hand into Rio’s as she closes her eyes and waits for the inevitable. Without any reconsideration Rio receives a heavy blow of the guy’s fist in his stomach, the sickening crack that Beth is sure is his rib snapping under the sheer force doesn’t just keep on resonating in her ears, it crawls right under her skin where it upholds a thrumming hum. 

For maybe a second that seems to last a year Beth is in the dark, she hears the water of the animal housings around them trickle softly from down the small waterfalls, and from the slow ripples that gush against the sides of the artificial ponds as an alligator slides into the water. But the short moment doesn’t last long enough to take her back to her beach. 

It doesn’t even occur to her in that moment because when she opens her eyes all she can focus on is Rio’s pained face, and Beth screams at this, pushing forward against her restraints. And she feels those cutting into her wrists and ankles, but it’s nothing to the flashes of terror that start to cloud her mind as she goes back to the night she shot him. Her nails dig deep into the soft wood of the chair as she feels a tear trickle down her cheek. And she _knows_ this blow to the guts is nothing to him, she has seen more scars adorning his chest, but it’s just the sight of him that gets to her.

Rio’s head hangs, but soon she hears a low rumble of laughter coming from him. He sits up, spits on the floor and looks back defiantly. Salazar dismisses his guy with a wave of his hand and gets up from the chair. “_Tut, tut, tut,_” he says, as he clasps his own hands behind his back and circles around Rio, who just refuses to look at him all together, staring straight ahead at Beth. _He’s fine, he’s doing fine,_ she tells herself. And she notices now how he is tied differently to his chair than she is. Unlike her, whose wrists are separately tied to the back legs of the chair, his wrists are knotted together behind his back, and it looks like he has some leeway. 

Beth snaps from her train of thoughts when she sees the slight shift in Rio’s. She’s still a bit destressed, but feeling like she will keep it together now, so she sits back straight against the chair again. She watches Salazar stalk towards her like a hungry predator and she shudders when feeling his presence close to her as he prowls to stand behind her. Beth freezes up as she feels Salazar put his hand on her shoulder and fan his fingers out across her collarbone, his flesh is cold and it feels like she’s got frostbite sinking right into her pores where he touches her. She denies looking him straight in the eye, focusing on Rio instead. 

Which is exactly what Salazar does as well. “I bet it’s fucking her, right?” 

Rio rocks his jaw, not tearing his eyes away from her for a second. 

Beth feels the cold of Salazar’s touch spread before he actually moves his hand, and she swallows hard as she rightfully guesses where he’s going. His hand slowly moves down, touching the top of her breast, he chuckles lowly, amused, as he notices goosebumps spread across her chest and shoulders. He drags his hand up to the bottom of her neck, the mouse of his hand resting in the dip of her throat. He doesn’t move his hands for too many seconds, dragging her fright out, and all Beth can focus on is steadying her breathing as she looks down, but not moving her head. It’s like he doesn’t even need to see to know he has captured her attention, and he gently squeezes his hand, barely inconveniencing her, but it gets to her. Her breathing isn’t steady, and she hates that she hears her throat produce hiccups in fast response to his actions. Her eyes aren’t calm anymore, and now he circles her throat with his large hand, and her eyes shoot between left and right now, as she desperately tries to see what he’s doing. She squirms in her seat in a futile attempt to get away from his grasp. 

“It’s in the top three, alright,” she hears Rio say, and her head snaps up, barely registering at first what he says, just hoping that this is enough distraction. But judging by the hand still encircling her neck in an almost caressing way, it’s not enough to get Salazar off her – maybe even dragging him in more. And then she remembers again, as a muffled scream in the back of her head, what they’re supposed to be doing now. 

“Thought this was about work?” she bites back at Rio. 

“Oh, you know it took some work, _Sugar_,” he grins, already on top of their game. “But you bumped your way into the top three eventually.”

And she knows he’s not being truthful, but it stings anyway, fueling the self-doubt she was sure she had ditched long ago like an avalanche rushing down a mountain. But there’s no time to drown into this pity-party, as Salazar tickles his fingers up along her neck. And she wishes that his fingertips would feel ugly and harsh on her skin, but he’s scarily soft to the touch. He spreads his hand, tracing her jaw from her ear to the dimple of her chin. “Is there anything else you would like to discuss?” she says sweetly, proud of herself to get that as confidently out as she did. 

“Yes!” he says gleefully. “Where, Miss Marks, do you feel there’s room for you to improve?” he asks, his fingers still comfortably resting along her chin. He’s circling his thumb there, almost affectionately from Rio’s viewpoint, as he let his own question dawn on him. “Outside of the obvious,” he laughs, winking at Rio. Who smiles stiffly back at him, trying to share his amusement. 

“I don’t have the best track record when it comes to abduction,” she voices as audibly as he possibly let her mouth open in his grasp. And honestly, it's been like three times by now, so it’s not even a lie., 

He finally retreats his hand from her face, and she can only barely contain a sigh of relief, her senses still alert for his next move. She follows Rio’s eyes as she hears Salazar softly threading behind her. At last she hears him take some steps forward, and not soon after her observation he moves in front of her and he towers over her. Without a clear emotion on his face he takes of his red suit jacket, gracefully draping it onto his chair. He looks down at his arms and hums under his breath as he carefully folds the sleeves of his dress shirt up over his elbows. Only when he starts folding the second sleeve he spares her a glance. 

There’s a scowl on his face like a nasty teacher about to belittle a student. He drops down, crouching in front of her, leaning with his elbows on her bare knees, his eyes never leaving hers. “These things can’t keep happening, Elizabeth,” and she audibly hears Rio move at the use of her full name. 

“I know,” she says remorsefully, her eyes watering up a little. 

“You know what else needs work?” he provides, mockingly in the same tone. 

She looks back at him, questioning. 

He wraps his hands around her knees and pushes himself up onto his feet again. And she follows his eyes as he ascends. She’s exhausted though, and keeping her concentration on his face makes her go tunnel vision instead of focusing on her wider surroundings. So when his backhand harshly connects with her cheek she is completely taken aback. Her painful skin immediately flushes a dark pink, and his ring leaves her with a gash on her cheekbone. “You not giving me a cold shoulder now?” she croaks, and looks at Rio before she squeezes her eyes shut when the sting starts spreading.

He stands back, admiring his handywork like he’s about to expose her in an art gallery. “If you can’t put a bitch down, smack her up,” he merely states. 

Beth turns her head back at him. Her blood is boiling, every fiber in her being hollers at her to call him out on his behavior, on his unprofessionalism, on his obvious inadequate management skills. But the look Rio gives her tells her something else - _Be a Boss Bitch!_. “I’d love to optimize my organization, but maybe it’s more efficient if you can give me those tips in writing,” she says, as she feels a warm streak of blood drip down her cheek. “I’ll take a voice memo if it’s too much trouble,” she adds. 

Salazar quickly grabs her damp hair, bending her closer, ready to yell something into her ear as they all look up at someone rattling at the door. By the sound of it the door is held together by a heavy chain, that’s lazily being heaved back and forth by the visitors frequent pushing.

One of Salazar’s guys struts off, exiting the main hallway through the plastic flaps at the back entrance. Beth follows him at far as her eyes go, while there’s still a vice grip onto her hair. When Salazar slowly entangles his hand she does her best effort to disguise her relief.

“Yo, when you gonna believe I ain’t packin’, my man?” she hears a guy laughing from down the hallway. It’s not Salazar’s guy, she had heard him talk when she woke up, but that’s not Cisco either. The voice is too young, too high of a pitch, like who is this? Her questions are fast answered when she sees Eddie more than dramatically enter the space. And he’s not the Eddie she remembers, and she’s not just talking about the Eddie she thinks has been between six wooden planks under the ground. No, this Eddie, he’s clear shaven and in a dark blue tux, his chest tat peeking out through his white dress shirt, carrying a heavy sports bag. Beth tries to lock eyes with Rio, but he’s clearly having an inner debate with himself, but he doesn’t seem that surprised though. 

“Love what you’ve done the place. Smells a bit like my grandmother’s retirement home thought,” Eddie jokes, but quickly sees Salazar is not here for a laugh. “Got a part of yo money,” he declares, dropping the bag in front of Salazar, and he puts his hand to his sides. The guy who opened the door re-enters, his gun out and pointing towards Eddie. “Sissy should be here in five with the rest of it,” he explains, as Salazar eyes the bag. His guy hands Sal the gun, and quickly kneels down to count the money. 

“Who are you?” Salazar asks him with disdain. 

“One of their associates,” he immediately throws back. “What do you care?” The guy nods at Salazar and puts the money back into the bag. “It’s 3.4, right?” Eddie says indifferently. 

Sal’s guy nods, “’bout that.”

“’Bout that,” Rio repeats, in that annoying know-it-all tone he can have. 

“No fakes?” Salazar throws at him. 

“Cisco will bring a copy of the ledger,” Eddie says. “With all the counterfeit numbers. But this all washed. I picked it up at all the small businesses.” He crossed his arms, waiting for a response from Salazar that just doesn’t seem to some. “Cisco’s loading up at the Ruiz factory. Should get you to your price.”

Salazar is contemplating all this, and he doesn’t seem that happy that yet another person is involved in this ordeal. “And you are?” he drawls. 

“I do logistics here,” Eddie laughs, but even Beth hears a kind of uncertainty in that. And Beth had to stretch her neck, but she caught some of the serial numbers on those bills. And she’s pretty sure at least not all of that money is real. So now they really had to divert attention before anyone discovered that bit.

Beth chuckles. “He does,” she confirms, even though she hasn’t seen him in over a year. “I trust him.”

He does not seem convinced, so Beth intervenes. 

“It’s one thing for me to be the front of the operation. That’s what legal people like, and you know that otherwise you wouldn’t have even met us,” she smiles sweetly. “But I do not have to explain to you that not everyone likes to deal with someone like me on the back end of it as well. So that’s where Eddie and Cisco come in, they look like they belong. Besides, this guy here fucked up a part of my logistics once, so he owed me,” she says, more to Eddie than to Salazar actually, even though she gives a piercing glance at the latter. “But that’s why you went with me right. Not just for the forefront, but because I knew what to do after that?”

Salazar just hollers now. “You know why I got into business with the two of you?”

“Why?” Beth asks, kind of afraid of the answer.

“Because I know Rio,” he replies. “I don’t know shit about you. The only shit I know is that you nearly murdered him, like a bunch of dominoes falling down: hurt my business chain. No trust, no pills, no money. I should just cap your ass.”

“There has been business,” Beth replies directly. “Your lab has been supplied from my end. And you have been making money, I know because I know the books. I check all the books. The only problem here is that you chose not to trust me,” Beth says. 

The door rattles again. And Big Boy leaves again to go answer the door. 

“So can I get something to drink around here?” Eddie says, but both Beth and Rio eye him down on the confidence level. He ignores it though. “We’ve been doing some good business, right? So why we even here. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like the zoo and all, but this croc deal, kinda creeps me out. Can’t you do warehouses like a normal crook?”

Salazar seems amused though. “My warehouses in the US are busy with generating actual money and deals I’m afraid, so please excuse my sidestep.”

And Beth is doing the math in her head now. Salazar is here with two of his guys, but she doesn’t know how many, if any, guys are out there. But soon they will outnumber them four to three when Cisco will join the club. Even if she and Rio don’t have a gun in their hands they still are outnumbering them in here. 

Big Boy opens the plastic blinds again as Cisco enters the hallway. And there is no time for Rio or Beth to say anything as Cisco extracts a gun from his belt, puts it to Big Boy’s head, and pulls the trigger, splattering his brain all over the wall. Beth yelps, shaking against her binds. And even Rio seems to need a few seconds to readjust his composure. 

“Well, he was useless anyway,” Salazar says, in the seconds Big Boys body slumps to the ground. “The security outside though, gonna be a problem for you idiots,” he smiles, menacing. “Got some men out there. So what’s gonna be a good offer to get out from under that siege?”

And while they figured this was just going to be a long, long negotiation, all of them were alarmed when they heard police sirens nearing. Through the windows at the top of the walls they could see the red and blue lights faintly shining against the ceiling. Outside were a few shots to be heard, yelling and screaming, more shots fired, before they heard cars rapidly take off, yet the lights still shone. The police cars had remained where they were. And through a megaphone a familiar voice could be heard: “You’re surrounded. Drop your weapons and exit with your hands above your head.” 

And while Salazar falls into a fit of laughter, Beth can only wonder which of the people in the room called the cops to them, and the repercussions that would follow from that.

### CONCEPTION

Beth was told to wait in the car by Bullet, who the ungrateful job of taxiing her around had been thrust upon. They had parked in the VIP spots near the back entrance of Paradiso. Even from the short distance, Beth could hear the pounding of the music from inside the building. The bass even thrilled her from the inside out, so she could only imagine how it would feel there on the dancefloor. 

Bullet left the key in the ignition, so Beth toys around with the radio station until the door on the driver’s seat is pulled open and Rio dropped himself down into the seat. He reaches out and puts the light near the rearview window on, engulfing the car in a bright white light. 

It takes Beth a few blinks to get used to the brightness after being in the dark for over half an hour. 

Rio looks her up and down, sucking in his lower lip as he does so. And – God – why does he have to do that. Beth squirms in her seat, feeling more than a little uncomfortable as she recalls the way he stole glances at her in the bathroom mirror. She lets her fingers trail down the neckline of her night blue dress, it’s showing a decent amount of cleavage, but nothing too much. He had told her this was a business meeting after all, and she was his partner now, she wasn’t going to show up like some ditzy girl _or_ a soccer mom. 

So she went out and bought this dress. Dark blue shade, the fabric shining when light caught it in a certain angle, or when she twirled it around. The length just above her knee, and her sleeves a bit widening around her elbows. She still had a pair of nude pumps she kept in her closet for special occasions to wear with it. And she had the rose gold necklace she bought herself, combined with the ring Rio had given her at Niagara Falls during their trip. 

The colors of Rio’s suit seemed plain enough; black slacks, with a black double breasted waistcoat covering his Bordeaux dress shirt. Beth wasn’t an expert, but the extent of her sewing experience told her that the stitches on that suit were very labor intensive, so this must have cost a fortune. 

“Need a rundown of the story again?” he said gruffly. 

Beth sighed. “You’ve pop quizzed me like three times already, I think I know the history of us by now.”

“Alright,” he said absentmindedly as he dug into the front pocket of his waistcoat, extracting two pocket squares in different shades of blue. “Whaddaya think?” he said, holding both against the blue sleeve of her dress. 

Even touching her through the dress send warm sparks exploding like wildfire through her body. “I—Maybe… You know, I’m pretty sure you know fashion better than I do.” Beth pulled the mirror down to busy herself with checking out if her make-up was still in place. She heard Rio chuckle low in his throat, and in the reflection she saw him doubt between the two colors. “I’d go with the one a few taints off, matchy-matchy’s corny,” she explained. He smiled and put the matching blue one away. 

“When we getting’ hitched?” he asked, as she extracted the bright red shade of lipstick from her purse. 

“February 4th,” she said. He kept looking at her, resulting in an awkward pause. “What he want to talk about?” she fired back, as she applied the lipstick. He stays silent too long to her liking, and she looks at him via the mirror. He’s slumped back in the chair, watching her. She puts her make-up away and turns towards him. “You can’t just not tell me. We’re partners,” she sighed. 

“’Right, mama. He want to up the delivery,” he says. 

“We can’t. It’s suspicious enough as it is,” she replies. 

“Not if we expand.”

“That’s ridiculous. We don’t sell nearly enough to justify that,” she huffs, crossing her arms across her chest. 

“Maybe we should expand our product line,” he says, with a bored tone as if he has already figured this out weeks ago. 

“Please enlighten me how you’d like to expand our business of bags and coats? Some belts maybe? Or those funny ropes around your wrists you call bracelets?”

Rio smirks and extends his hand towards her, and she’s certain he’s going to pull his hair-pushing move on her, probably mumble something like ‘Don’t ya worry, baby,’ as he does so. 

But she’s wrong, and he lays a hand on the headrest of the seat. And then it clicks in her head. “Why don’t you tell me,” he says instead.

“Car interior,” she says, as she looks around this car. And she had never really thought about it – and really, most of the cars at Boland Motors either had some kind of thread-based interior, and the sports cars were something ridiculous, so it wasn’t like it came up on a day to day basis – but this car didn’t just have leather seats. It’s also all the paneling, the steering wheel, the gear-shift, everything. Even if they didn’t need to expand this was still a great idea.

“We can combine the businesses in the factory,” she says. And she can’t help but feel a little turned on as she can see Boland Motors grow right in front of her eyes. She turns towards him in her seat. “We’ll need someone to direct market the upholstery to new clients to make this move plausible, but it’ll pay back the revenue when the clients replace their old interior. We can wash the money through new labor and new clients.”

Rio laughs, but it’s an encouraging one, not one to ridicule her. “I love it when you boss up,” he elaborates. “But let’s worry ‘bout them details later. This ain’t gonna come easy for him.”

Beth smirks. “You want to play a game? Thought that wasn’t your thing?”

“It ain’t,” Rio says. “Unless I want him to up us to 40%.”

“But we get 25 now.”

“He want to double our delivery. And he sure as hell ain’t gonna give us double percentage.”

“So now what?”

“We gonna go hard on him. Tell ‘em it’s too risky. Tell ‘em we already don’t like it he got so many suppliers.”

“Maybe he could have less,” Beth supplies. 

“Let’s just build this up slowly, sweetheart. Don’t want yo FBI guy on our tail again.” And he’s probably right about that. 

“As much as I want to deny, he’s after me for some reason. He doesn’t want to let me go.”

Rio contemplates this. “So what you think is the reason?”

Beth frowns. “Don’t you have some guys on the inside who can tell me that? That would be utmost helpful.”

Rio just smirks and gets out of the car. Beth mimics his move. She walks to his side of the car and he offers his arm, which she takes. All too aware of the glass windows looking out not just at the lake, but also towards the lot. “You got this,” he says, as they walk towards the back door where Bullit is waiting for them. 

When they enter the business lodge she has previously visited at daytime it is like a whole other world. She feels the bass of the hardstyle music from the different rooms in her body, even though you can hardly hear it here. She had obviously looked it up on YouTube when Rio had mentioned the genre, and she had indeed hated every second of it. But it should be a good cover for their business endeavors.

Rio guides her towards the red couches at the large window with lookout towards the lake. Salazar and his entourage are already seated there, looking like they made it their new home already. Their table is scattered with what Beth perceives as expensive drinks and a variety of different drugs, barely clad young girls are littered across the couches as entertainment for the party. Salazar is draped into one of the big chairs like he owns the place, and if this had been a Roman tableau one of those girl would have been feeding him grapes. But since this is 2019 she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d be snorting coke from one of their busts. 

When Beth and Rio come close Salazar waves some of his entourage away from the couch next to him to make room for them. And they settle down into their seats. Rio leans down, almost relaxed as he stares Salazar down. Beth sits down next to him, trying to find a posture between fiancée and business partner. Which she soon finds out doesn’t hold up to Rio’s idea of that when he wraps a hand around her upper thigh. 

“So, what you want to talk about?” he asks, looking at Salazar. 

Salazar immediately burst into a laugh, waving for a nearby waitress. “Get my friends a drink, will you?” he says. 

And Beth has to bite back a scowl when the waitress retreats to get their drinks and Salazar smacks her ass. 

“Our business has been starting up better than I expected,” Salazar starts. 

“You expected differently?” Beth asks coyly. “I believe we offered you a well thought out plan which has lived up to more than you wanted. And now you will nodoubtly propose we do even more?”

Rio leans into Beth, putting his lips against her ear. In the meantime the waitress returns with their drinks, and Salazar with a deep laugh takes them to put them on the table. Beth’s focus is on Rio though. “Let me do some talking, but don’t lose that front, mama.”

“How them pills moving then? Bet they going like hotcakes now you dropped them price without that border between your distributers,” Rio says. 

Salazar sips his drink. “Yes, I can’t deny, you delivered. But I’d like to see if we can expand. Not too much!” he inserts, making a slow-down hand gesture. “But, like, maybe look at an option to double it within a reasonable time.”

Rio leans forward. “Yeah, you see,” he says, as he takes a big gulp of his drink, “I don’t know how comfortable we are with that. There’s many people supplying to your business, and we only one branch, two if you count them containers. It’s a liability to have, like, eight parties to up their game.”

“I have three solid go’s for now,” Salazar immediately interjects. 

Rio sips some again and sets his drink down. “I ain’t saying we not interested. We are. But it’s a big risk, and I don’t like taking that without some kind of compensation.” 

Salazar smiles. “I know. But I’m willing to give right? I’m a giver when I’m a believer in my people. And I believe you and your woman,” he says, looking Beth up and down with that hungry look she has tried to forget ever since Quebec, “can be good for that.”

“We can,” Rio says, stroking Beth’s thigh in a possessive way. But unlike he probably means that, it just pisses her off. 

“_We can_,” Beth repeats, looking at Rio. His pupils have gone ablaze, staring into hers with a frightening kind of want. It makes Beth turn away from it to focus back to Salazar. “What is your time window? We need to come up with an additional business plan. And we need to know if _all_ your other partners are good for it as well.”

Salazar leans back in his seat, stroking his chin. He looks out at the lake, and Beth follows his gaze. All the while, Rio’s hand seems to have found the seam of her dress, playing with the hem of it while he leans his head into her neckline. 

Beth stands up suddenly, dragging Rio up with her as she does. She directs her attention to Salazar. “You know, you think about that, we need a little while to talk this over. Okay?”

Salazar just nods – but he’s smirking like he’s hiding something. 

Beth and Rio pick up their drinks. And Beth drags Rio towards the stairs she knows leads up to the roof. One of Rio’s guys she has seen before at one of the warehouses is doing guard duty there, but he lets them pass with a simple nod from Rio. And even leading them up the stairs does things to Beth, as she clasps her hand into his. 

It takes a mere few seconds for Rio to close the hatch to the roof and he’s immediately on her. His hands sliding across her body. One of them first attaching to the back of her upper thigh, sliding up to her ass. The other immediately attaching one side of her neck, while he leans in to latch his lips onto the other side. 

Beth barely has time to register the roofs surroundings; it’s not that late but most of the sky is pitch black, save for the light blue rim over the woods near the horizon. Rio’s lips are against her throat, licking there down to her clavicle and she wants to believe that this is the same as a week ago, but she feels in her bones that it’s not. “What has gotten into you,” she breathes, as she puts a hand onto his chest. 

Rio sucks at the pulse point on her neck, drawing a low murmur from her. “I don’t know. I just want you so much right now,” he smiles against her skin. Licking the, what will undoubtedly be, hickey in a few hours. “Turn around.”

And she does, even though she knows there’s something off. Rio melts against her, now both of them having the same view across the lake. Both staring at the few orange bolts escaping from the horizon before night definitely sets in. “So, what’s going on?” she asks again. And it probably comes out more innocently than she wants it to, she wants it to sound confident. But it’s hard to concentrate with his body so pushed up against her like that. “Don’t you want to close that deal?” she adds. 

Rio’s lips form a smile against her neck. His left hand lazily settling on her thigh, but his right hand starts there as well, but it bundles up her dress while it moves down. Hungry to attach to the flesh of her thigh. “It can wait,” he says, as he moves his hand up to her waist, under her dress. Too slowly traveling his hand from the upper line of her panties to her cloth covered core. And she leans into his touch, grudgingly admitting to herself in her mind that she wants this. 

That’s all the invitation he needs to slide his hand down her panties, softly sliding his fingers over her lips. And she wants to resist, but also she doesn’t, she moans softly when he lazily drags two of his fingers through her slit without resistance. “Hmmm, already so wet for me, baby?” and he puts it out as a question, but it’s really not. And she answers by leaning into his body more, pressing her ass into his crotch while he keeps stoking.

He’s now pressing into her like nothing else matters. His fingers stroking against her entrance at an increasing pace, ignoring her throbbing bud, frustrating her, but looking for that other spot that will put her over the edge. “I love it when you take charge,” he says huskily against her neck, first sucking her there and then trailing his tongue up to behind her ear. 

Beth let out a repressed moan. He’s touching her in all the right places and this business deal had her on edge even before they got here, much less now that he is touching her so intimately. His fingers are now curling up into her, finally giving her more, the other hand on her hip just pressing her more closely into his body, feeling every part of him while he is doing his ministrations. 

“I love everything about you, darling,” he says. And it’s so blunt, so rare and sincere, that it might be so honest that she wants to not believe it. Yet his touch tells a different story. 

And his fingers continue their sweet torture. Stroking her entrance, sometimes briefly touching her clit, but only barely. Then he inserts two fingers deeply into her, which immediately has her bolting into his touch. “Yeah, that’s it, give it to me,” he says, when he sucks her earlobe into his mouth, demanding even more sensatory reactions from her. 

And that is when he keep stroking her at the right pace and she slumps into him when her orgasm overtakes her, a white flash of relieve shooting up and down her body. Repressed moaning into his throat when she feels here body convulse and then relax. She’s still panting and relying on him when she finally pulls away and taking a few steps back, turning around until she feels the rim of a tall potted plant into her back to lean down against. 

“So now tell me what’s going on?” she breathes, pulling down her dress. 

Rio seems to be a bit confused, still sorting down his thoughts. He’s leans onto a wooden bench right in front of her. He’s staring into the distance before he directs his attention back to her. “I’m good,” he says first. “But he put some X into my drink,” he adds. “Probably when I got here.”

Beth’s a bit confused now. “Some X?” she asks.

Rio seems to be coming down to normal mode again. “Some X. You know. Molly, Eggroll, XTC, MDMA. The thing we provide him for.”

“Jezus Christ,” Beth says, scandalized. Not just because their endeavors like three seconds ago, those were very satisfying even though she now doesn’t really know how she feels about it. But apparently this is how they’re doing business now. “You done spacing? Or how you call it for this drug?”

Rio snickers. “Yeah, I think I’m good now.” He sits down in a more relaxed mode she knows from him. His legs in a V-shape, his hands settling onto his neck. 

“So,” she says, arms crossing over her chest, dead set on flipping this mood. “How’s our product?”

Rio chuckles. “I’m not a big drug user. But this is one sick trip, ma,” he says. And he’s ogling her up and down. “If we stop the port and the Ruiz factory he’s fucked,” he adds. “We have the upper hand here.”

“So how are we going to play this?” she asks, comfortable enough to discuss this again. 

Rio’s contemplating this question, staring into thin air. 

“Should I sit on your lap like one of his ho’s?” she asks coyly.

“Please don’t,” he quickly says. And she was joking, but he seems to treat it as a normal thing to ask. “We partners right?”

“Right,” she says.

### CONTAINER

Beth had woken up in what might be the best bed she had ever touched. She let her hand slide across the comforter and in between the blankets, taking in the softness with her eyes still closed. A low rumble of satisfaction bubbled up from her throat as she pulled the fabric around her, cocooning herself. Her comfortable bubble was immediately burst when she felt the matrass shift beside her, and her eyes shot open. 

Rio was laying beside her on the bed, dressed in a black T-shirt and black sweatpants. He was smiling drowsily at her, while Beth was just gaping back at him, mortified. 

She scooted up against the headboard, peaking under the blanket to see that she was still dressed in the black dress from yesterday. “Oh, thank God,” she sighed. Unfortunately the downside of still wearing yesterday’s clothes is that her chest felt mighty uncomfortable because she was also still wearing her bra. 

“What did you think, ma? ‘S was gonna dress you down? What kind of crook do you think I am?” he joked. She just looked at him sideways, annoyed by that. 

Beth cleared her throat, and pulled the comforter up to her chin. “Why am I in your bed?” she asked calmly and collected. 

Rio pushed himself up and mimicked her pose against the headboard, only he’s being utmost relaxed. “Yeah,” he dragged out. “Figured if Jimmy Boy goes diggin’ into the hotel bills it be better to uphold we a thing,” he explained. 

And Beth let that sink down, and yes, that does make sense actually. She moved to the edge of the bed and got up. “I’m going to take a shower. When do we leave?” she asked, as she moved towards her suitcase. She picked it up and put in onto the bed, zipping it open to rummage through it. She threw a floral dress onto the bed, and started to gather her toiletries. When he didn’t answer she peeked over at him.

Rio looked at the dress and sucked in his lower lip, looking unsatisfied. 

“What?” she spat. 

“Yeah, you ain’t wearing _that_.”

And, excuse him? Who died and made him the wedding fashion guru? “It’s just the rehearsal dinner tonight, we’re not walking down a runway,” she huffed annoyed. 

“_C’est terrible_,” he drawled. 

“Don’t mock me with your French,” she said. She picked up the dress and subtly wrapped a new set of underwear into it to take with her to the en suite. Rio had discretely looked away. She was still seething because of his remark. “You know, I don’t even know why you care, it’s not like you even know anyone.”

“I ain’t gonna be your asshole boyfriend in a D&G suit while you strutting around in your H&M knockoff.”

“_Ooohhh_,” she breathed, as red splotches started appearing across her chest. “So this is about you? Why didn’t you tell me? That, of course, changes everything. Please excuse me that my poor ass couldn’t bring something to match your crime scene couture!” she nearly yelled, barely keeping herself composed. She crossed her arms across her chest as she stared him in the eyes. 

“You done?” he said after a few seconds. Beth dropped down on the bed, still pissed. “Look in the closet,” he said. 

Beth snapped her head back. She started to calm down, and she silently stood up as she sauntered towards the walk-in closet separating the en suite and the bedroom. It was mostly empty, save for ‘bout three clothing bags on the rack. “You can’t just buy me clothes like that!” she said loudly, as she zipped one of the bags open. 

“I’ll take it off your cut,” he answered from the bedroom. 

She took the first dress out of the bag. It’s a shiny forest green dress, off shoulder sleeves, with a length just above her knee. She held in front of her in the full length mirror. And even though she hated to admit it, the color really looked great on her. With some reservations she changed into it, easily zipping up the zip at the side of it. She stepped out into the bedroom again. 

“How you even know my size?” she asked, as she let her hands slide along the fabric, smoothening it down. 

Rio was just staring at her at first, snapping back when the question reached his brain. “I took your measurements when you were asleep,” he said. Her head snapped up, ready to scold at him, scandalized by the thought alone, but his poker face immediately faltered into a heartily laugh. “I’m kidding mama. But I may have borrowed a dress or two from your closet to take to the store.” 

“Please tell me you didn’t rummage through all my drawers,” she sighed. 

Rio laughed. “Nah, you can keep yo panties to yourself.”

Beth instantly blushed. “Don’t say that,” she hissed. She spins around on her feet. “I’m going to try the other ones.” There were two dresses left. One of them was a powdery pink color, floor length with a cleavage that dipped down a bit lower than she’d usually wear. She’d decided that she probably was going to wear that one tonight at the rehearsal dinner. 

The last dress just had her gaping like a fish when she saw herself in it. It was a shimmering pearl color, with a Swarovski crystal - or something like it - pattern sewn along the neckline, gathering together at the midsection before dropping down into a split that went down to the floor. It was gorgeous, but it really seemed like an overkill. She bustled back into the bedroom, Rio still on the bed, now scrolling through his phone. 

“I can’t wear this!” she said. 

Rio dropped his phone when he turned his head towards her. “If you ain’t wearing that voluntarily I’ll staple you into it,” he said, his eyes trailing down her body. 

“I’ll overshadow the bride,” she said annoyed, as she held up the dress with her arm across her bust. It had a close at the back, but she couldn’t reach it. She stared at herself again in the mirror in the bedroom. Rio scooted off the bed and stalked towards her, steadying her at the shoulders. He looked at her through the mirror as he took a hold of the zipper and slowly dragged it up. Beth took in a breath as he dragged it towards the upper part of her spine. 

“Yo friend’s spending like three million dollars on this wedding in a fuckin’ chateau. Sure she had Versace dug up to personally design her dress. I think you in the clear,” he said, as he looked at her through the mirror again. 

And, honestly, she really never wanted to take this dress off ever again. The fabric was just hugging her like there was no tomorrow, the lines of the dress perfectly trailing the curves of her body, it really felt like a second skin. She turned her head towards Rio. “I don’t have any shoes to wear with this,” she said softly. 

Rio smirked. “I got you, mama.”

*

After that they had some breakfast in the room and got ready for the last six hours of the trip. Beth had put on her cheap floral dress, partly because they were just going to be sitting in the car anyway, but also partly to annoy Rio. As they were walking towards the car Dean had send her some pictures of him and the kids at the water park. He wasn’t the best photographer, so a lot of them had drops, smudges and moving kids in the frame. But somehow he got a few of her four babies in frame looking like they were thoroughly enjoying themselves. 

Beth couldn’t help but show Rio the pictures as she flopped down into the passengers seat. Rio smiled briefly at them – which truly was enough, why would he even care anyway? – before turning the engine on. After settling herself Beth reached out to fire up the navigation. “We going via Montreal?” he asked, as she put in the address. 

“Nah, we’re passing the border on Hill Island,” he said. 

Beth smiled. “Oh, I hear it’s beautiful there. They have a historic lookout tower,” she added. 

“Good for them,” Rio replied flatly. 

After finishing up the navigation Beth turned in her seat, looking at Rio. “What’s going on with you?” she asked. Surely her dress didn’t annoy him _that_ much. 

“Nothin’,” he said. Beth kept staring at him, folding her arms across her chest. “Some business deal got delayed in Detroit.”

“Well, you should tell me, I’m your colleague,” Beth said, now kind of annoyed herself. 

Rio stepped up the gas when they exited Syracuse, obviously determined to not make this the six and a half hour drive that it should be. “You my employee. And it ain’t your branch of the business,” he added. 

Beth looked at him curiously. 

“What? You think I only deal in paper, honey?” he let out a hard laugh. And she can’t help but scrunch her nose at that subtle belittling tone that _honey_ had sticking to it. “Think I’m crossing the border myself to get what? Some new Christmas wrapping paper? Pay another craft store for a little storage space?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid,” Beth huffed, looking away from him through the front window. But instead of the calm green scenery surrounding them making her feel more at ease, an angry fire kept burning in her chest. And she tried to keep it down, she really did, but her hands tightened into first and she snapped her head back at Rio. 

“How do you even expect me to know?!” she blurted out. “The only times I see you is when we exchange sports bags of money in sketchy, dark outdoorsy places that give me the fucking creeps. Or when you see fit to break into my kitchen and ambush me with those thugs of yours. So how the hell do I know what you’re doing aside from that?” she seethed. 

All the while Rio kept staring into the distance of the road, impatiently tapping his fingers on the steering wheel while keeping a straight face. All of a sudden he steered away from the road, into an empty parking lot next to the highway. He hit the brakes way too sudden and Beth would’ve flung forward in her seat save for the seatbelt restraining her. The air is pushed from her lungs as she reached to the dashboard to push up against as she composed herself. 

“You get what happens if we get to there without that deal?” he barked at her, his dark eyes boring into hers. 

And Beth can’t deny that she’s kind of scared when he acts like this, and her eyes get wide a saucers when he scolded those words at her. But her anger is still boiling in her veins as well. “No, Rio, I don’t!” she strongly told him. “Maybe if you explain the rest of this Mission Impossible I could actually help you with that,” she added. 

And he paused for a whole, staring ahead of him while she kept looking at him. His fingers curled around the steering wheel while he found some inner peace.

“How you gonna do that?” he asked, abruptly more jovial than a few seconds ago. “Get yo sister to whip out one of them toy guns and get all fine and frugal on my guy?” he deadpanned, but with a slight undertone of amusement. 

And truthfully, just picturing that did amuse her, but not beyond her annoyance. “I thought threats and violence were your department as well,” she coyly said. “I mean, I could ask her, but I obviously don’t want to meddle out of my business.” 

“Good,” he said, after a few seconds, obviously calmed down after his fit. He reached out to the radio, putting on some popular station with top 40 music, which she’s pretty sure isn’t his taste at all. He even gave her shit when she had put up her Girl Power-playlist after she had set through two hours of jazz. 

Rio’s phone buzzed and Beth could see that some Gretchen is calling before he picked it up. And she watched him going through a vocabulary of _yeahs_, _uh-huhs_ and _good goods_ before he hangs up after a minute or two. After the call he really seemed to be more at ease, and he turned on the ignition yet again. 

“Check the glovebox,” he said, as they drove onto the highway again. 

Beth watched him quietly, but he seemed to be waiting for her to do what he said. With a click she opened it, pulling out a bunch of paperwork and a passport. She looked at the papers first, it was just the stuff about the car, she recognized it from Boland Motors when she had taken up a few shift there a few summers ago when a bunch of the staff had been on holiday and some had been down with the flu. The passport was graced with a picture of Rio, but it didn’t have his name. “So, Miguel Ruiz, you’re from 1983?” she said with a smile. 

“Miguel Ruiz is,” he replied curtly. 

“C’mon,” she said. “If we get pulled over I need to know your stats,” she said. 

“Oh, we probably will be, mama,” he cut in immediately. 

Beth looked sideways at him. “Are you serious?” she asked. “Why?” she continued. And she hadn’t really thought about it, actually. And that is when she actually looked at what he was wearing today. It wasn’t anything special, he was wearing a black button up dress shirt, dark jeans and clean, black shoes. He wasn’t wearing any kind of bling, and he was usually wearing some kind of – what she assumed – was an expensive watch and a finely sewed wool coat. And whatever piece of clothing or accessory her suburban mind had no way of identifying as expensive, but a border agent probably had more knowledge of.

Rio just laughed and shook his head, probably hearing her train of thoughts even though she did not speak them out. 

“So what do I tell them?” she asked. 

Rio smirked. “You’ll think of something,” he said. And Beth only now realized that this was probably half the reason he even considered bringing her to this at all. That it isn’t just the way she presented herself, but also the way she can tell a believable story under pressure. Which kind of, actually, increased the pressure. 

It only took about fifteen more minutes before they got into line for the border patrol. “So, you don’t have like a guy here you’ve paid off to just give you a free pass,” she tried. 

Rio stroked his chin before looking at her. “Too suspicious,” he said. They arrived at the booth and a middle aged, chubby white woman asked for their license and registration. And with her best innocent look Beth pulled out the paperwork from the glovebox again, and added her personal passport. She dropped it in Rio’s lap before she got to give it to the customs officer. With a bit blush on her cheeks the gathered it again and gave it to the woman again. 

“What’s your purpose of this visit?” the woman asked sternly, as the looked at Rio and Beth together. 

Beth giggled, and put a hand on Rio’s shoulder and leaned in so she could see the woman’s nametag. “We’re going to the wedding of my college friend. Can you believe a 43-year-old woman getting wedded for the third time?” she said, adding emphasis as if she were spilled the hottest of tea’s. “I sure hope three time’s the charm, Samantha,” she added. 

Samantha went through their paperwork, and looked up from it to compare the both of them to their respective pictures. “Could you go to lane three in a bit?” she added, with so few emotion Beth considered that she might have been talking to a robot. 

“And we’re scouting for a location for our own wedding,” Beth added, showing the ring Rio had given her alter ego the night before. “I hear Chateau Frontenac is the best of the best, but this one is fine with a church wedding,” she said, clearly indicating Rio, who merely shrugged at her remark, trying to be casual. “But I said: You can’t just ask me to be your wife at Niagara Falls and do a dowdy church wedding. Especially not if my friend’s pulling out all this extravaganza at a friggin’ castle!” she blurted. 

Rio pulled up his shoulders again. “What can I say, luv’, my mum’s a believer,” he smiled his brightest smile at her. 

Beth reached out to stroke his cheek. “And I want to make her happy too, but I don’t just want to go to a church. I mean, your businesses have been doing well, I’m sure we can do another ceremony at a more exquisite location,” Beth said, looking Rio into the eyes, now completely ignoring Samantha. 

With a slew grin on his face Rio pushed his face forward and kissed Beth on the lips before returning his attention back to customs. And Beth was glad he diverted his attention, because she felt herself flush in the chest and a smile crept upon her face. “Well, you heard her. Guess it’s a recon mission instead of a wedding reception,” Rio told Samantha as he took the paperwork and passports back from her. 

“Okay, ugh, just go enjoy our great country,” she huffed. 

“We still got to--” Beth tried. 

“No, it’s fine,” Samantha said gruffly, but with a slight smile on her face. “Chateau Frontenac is great by the way, I stayed there for my wedding night.”

“We’ll keep that recommendation in mind,” Beth smiled right back, as they drove across the border. And she could not contain her satisfied smile that creeped up after a few seconds. But Rio just flat out refused to say anything to her. “So about that being pulled over?” she suggested. 

Rio took a long time to respond to her, just keeping up a smirk while he drove. “You did good,” he just gave her. 

And truly she didn’t think that he gave her as much praise as she deserved. But then again, what was she expecting? Confetti canons and champagne? That had not been an option from the get go. It had been more a confirmation to herself that Rio saw something in her, and that he trusted her with it, that could come into fruition when it really mattered. She didn’t know what kind of illegal things he might be importing, but it was safe to assume he carried at least his gun with him, and she prevented them from getting searched. So if he didn’t do it, she at least gave herself a shoulder pat for that. 

The drive to Quebec in Canada was mostly them annoying each other over the playlist, again, and Rio driving high above the speed limit. If Beth didn’t know better she’d say the were a married couple already. She couldn’t even begin to count the times she and Dean had argued about the radio, even if the kids had been listening to their own music or watching their own DVD’s. 

They had stopped briefly at a diner along the road, even though Rio really didn’t want to, but they were both hungry and the dished served had been fine. Rio had even left a generous tip because their waiter had been the nicest guy ever, pouring over them with romantic suggestions for their fake wedding, he was probably even nicer than then Liam and Jill from the expensive restaurant. And maybe a bit because he told them that his boyfriend was littered in tattoo’s and people always gave them shit about it because he was such a seemingly white, blonde nice guy. 

When they came close to Quebec Beth woke up from the nap she had been taking since a little from the diner they had lunch at. She didn’t really want to fall asleep, but Rio refused to let her take the wheel, so she just peaced out at a certain time. He woke her up when they were close to pulling up at the castle though. 

She murmured something incoherently before throwing off the fleece blanket she had pulled up to her chin before that. “We there?” she said drowsily. 

Rio parked close to the chateau and shut off the car. “Yeah, we there,” he reciprocated. And he got out of the car and started gathering their stuff from the car. When she exited the car and actually looked at the castle it was even more impressive than when she had looked it up on google. It was massive, and ridiculous to be honest. She was really never going to blend in here.

Beth threw off the blanket onto the floor and practically rolled out of the car. She gathered the dresses and Rio’s suit while Rio had pulled out their luggage. They walked up to the castle in a comfortable silence, before Beth could not contain her curiosity anymore. “When we meeting your people?” she asked, as they walked up the outside stairs.

“Tomorrow morning,” he replied. “So no drinking tonight,” he added. “We got to be clear minded,” he said. “No room for errors.” Beth skipped ahead up the stairs to open the door, but en employee already did the work for her. They wanted to take the suitcases from Rio, but he smiled briefly at them, shaking his head in a ‘no’. 

Beth mimicked Rio’s smile to the bellboy. “Thank you, we’re fine. Could you show us to the reception though, please?” she asked. He walked ahead of them, and Beth and Rio created some distance from him. 

“Your deal?” she asked softly. “How’s that going?”

“In the clear,” he said. “We fine.”

“So why you need me?” she said, as she started digging into her bag to find her RSVP.

Rio snickered. “Oh, I got a bunch of reasons why you here. I’ll fill you in when your people choreograph their wedding tonight.”

And that just seemed like a non-negotiable reason for her to be here, even though he gave her none. And he had not given her much for this trip, but the fact that he had given her the trust to put up not just her basic front, but also to let her use – what she now considered - her superpower after very few tries except for on him. That was trust enough. 

They arrived at the reception and a stern, thin woman with half-moon glasses received them. “Names please?” she said, while rapidly typing onto her keyboard. 

“Yes, well, we’re here for a wedding,” Beth started. 

The woman looked over her glasses. “Everyone is,” she said curtly. “Names?”

“Miguel Ruiz and Elizabeth Boland,” Rio said, as he rummaged through the stuff on the reception desk. He started pulling out pens from a cup and reading the text on them. The woman – Cassandra, Beth read from the keychain dangling from her neck – quite obviously cleared her throat as Rio’s behavior. 

“I have a Beth Boland here,” she said. 

“Yes, that’s me,” Beth chirped at Cassandra. 

“You’re sharing a room?” she asked, her eyes shifting between them. 

Rio finally left the pen cup alone, but he was now leaning onto the reception desk, staring Cassandra in the eyes. “Yeah, we are,” he said. 

Beth put a hand on Rio’s arm. “Honey, she’s just checking,” she smiled a little forced. She diverted her attention back to Cassandra. “Don’t mind him, it’s been a long ride from Detroit, we’re just a bit tired.”

Cassandra shrugged and gave Beth the key. She seemed thoroughly unimpressed by Rio’s attitude. “Room 607. Checkout’s Sunday before 12.00,” she added. “Elevator is down that hall,” she pointed. “You’ll find any addition information in the binder in your room. Do you need someone to carry your luggage?”

“Nah,” Rio said. “We good.”

They got into the elevator and Beth finally started to relax a bit. The comprising space of the car had made her feel really cooped up and jittery. Just walking around, and the fact she’d be enjoying a fancy dinner tonight, made the negative energy flow from her body.

“So we a _we_ now?” she asked.

And Rio just looked at her with that grin of his which would keep her guessing.

When the door opened they were immediately faced with – who Rio would later learn from Beth she referred to as the pawn of Satan – Wendy’s best friend Marissa. At first glance a cute girlish-looking woman with shoulder length brown hair and brown eyes, but the eruption rate of an active volcano. “Bethie Marks!” she squealed, and pulled Beth into a hug. 

“Hi, you,” Beth dragged out in the sweetest tone she could muster. It was obvious to Rio that this was a greeting none of these women wanted to do, but were doing for common curtesy and to keep up face. He silently arched an eyebrow at Beth, who rolled her eyes in annoyance. When she entangled herself from Marissa she had that smile back on her face though.

“God, maid of honor, you must be super busy. We should leave you to it,” Beth said, as she and Rio stepped into the hallway. 

Marissa whipped out a clipboard with a bunch of papers and started aggressively going through them. “Bethie, I think you’re on the wrong floor, this luxury floor is mostly family and close friends,” she said, probably adding a mental _buh-bye_ after that. 

Rio sneaked a hand around Beth’s waist and pulled her close to him. “Damn, woman,” he joked, as he looked at Marissa, “you ruining my surprise?”

Marissa had some kind of short circuit in her brain from that. Clearly not making the connection with Beth and Rio being here together, not even fathoming of that being a possibility. She just went through her papers again as to find the answer there, scrunching her nose when she obviously couldn’t find it. 

“I’m sorry,” Beth said, as she put her hand on Rio’s chest. “You haven’t met my boyfriend yet, this is Rio.”

Rio held out his hand, and Marissa shook it timidly, forcing a smile on her face. “But I’ll be in your paper mill as Miguel. Rio’s the name I go by though, If you wanna adjust your namecards or gift bags some shit. But if ya don’t mind we gonna go get into some new gear and get ready for that rehearsal, ya know what I’m saying?” _And, just God, could he actually play up being any more street?_. Rio didn’t wait for and answer but gathered their suitcases and brushed past Marissa. 

“See you later,” Beth said to her, as she strode past her, leaving her with an astonished expression on her face. 

And Marissa just whipped her head around soon enough the see Rio practically drag Beth into their room, falling into a fit of laughter, before the door was thrown closed with a loud bang, resonating through the hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've already mapped out the next part - unless I change something up along the way - so I hope the next part will take a little less long.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the new negotiations go on to expand their business with Salazar, it's time to test their limits. At the same time we're on the verge of meeting their contact in the past. And they get wrapped up in an even bigger mess in the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO. Did not abandon this, but combining writing fic with a busy job is just... ugh. And - surprise - takes a lot of time to correctly research everything about X. But I wanted to get this out on the verge of S3 (in which we no-doubtly find out Eggroll is... probably not the drug that the practical storyline of this fic is about, but just food. But shh let me live my dream).

### 4\. CONCEPTION

“We should check if _our_ suppliers can up their game,” Beth states, as she whips out her cell from her bag, already scrolling through her contacts. Honestly, she was a bit worried, they had approached most of the possible ones in the previous months, and a lot of them just merely had no interest. And if they did have interest, the cost might not weigh up to the benefit.

Rio pushed himself up from the bench, sauntering towards her. He pushes down her phone when he comes closer, still a bit on a high from the look of it. Beth looked up into his eyes, kind of put off by his easy dismissal. “We can find more from out of state,” he says. “When we get him to up our percentage we can cover the import costs.”

Beth contemplates this. “Well, how much do you think he wants? What is his perception on,” and she tries to mimic Salazar’s cool and sleazy tone, “_within a reasonable time?_”

Rio just belts out a laugh now. And Beth smiles slyly back at him, liking the sound of that, his timber drumming down into her bones. “Nothin’ unreasonable,” he answers. “He needs us to get him his base product legally. He can be patient.” 

“We’ll need more personnel,” Beth points out strictly. 

“I know a guy,” he says with raspy voice. “Or more if we need to.”

Beth hates it when he gets all secretive like this. Like, he’s not pushing her out of the loop, but not exactly pulling her into it as well. He’s still got this crime ring going on she doesn’t know about, and she doesn’t like it. Especially because over the past few months she more and more realizes how much she might be able to take the fall. Which is… unlikely, she likes to believe, but not impossible. If anything she knows not to take what her current partner tells her at face value, how painful that may be, much less a stranger. She physically shakes that thought off lightly. 

“Let’s go then,” she says, putting a hand against his cheek. He leans into it, rubbing his stubble against it, closing his eyes in comfort. 

“Hmm, you feel so good, baby,” he says in that low voice of his. 

Beth slaps him lightly, and absentmindly rubs her thighs together. “Get back into the game, you idiot,” she tells him softly, and abruptly pulls back her hand. She brushes past him back to the hatch, but he doesn’t follow her immediately. “You coming?” she asks, as she pulls the hatch open. 

Rio follows Beth to the hatch and down the stairs. She sways a few feet ahead of him, and he is a few steps behind her, looking at her when she takes the lead. He pulls his head back in the game as they come close to Salazar again. Beth takes a seat on the couch first, and Rio drops himself down next to her. He looks intently at her, silently giving her his blessing to take the lead in this. 

“So,” Beth starts out sweetly at Salazar, while she sips her drink, “what is your proposition?” she continues. 

Salazar just eyes her up, not expecting _her_ to start the conversation up again. “A year to double up both products,” he says. “You two get 30 percent.”

Beth splurges her drink. Rio reaches out to wipe a drop that rolls down her chin, but she shrugs his touch away. He pulls back his hand and licks up the drop from his finger, though. She’s mad at that, but directs her attention back to Salazar. “We’ll only need six to eight months. And you’ll cut us in for 40 percent,” she says. Salazar seems surprised. “This is non-negotiable, you’ll understand.”

Salazar is immediately fired up, angry to say the least. He shoots his eyes to Rio, who merely merrily raises his drink at him. “You heard her,” he drawls. “If you want your product to keep up its standard, you’ll need us. _I know_,” he adds, deliberately. Rio almost finishes his drink in one gulp, holding up their stare. 

Sal at first seems to be stuck at a stern, unbreakable look with him. But then he breaks into a loud, inappropriate holler. “You, get here,” he laugh, waving in an attractive black girl with a lot of braids, and with a fashionable fannypack strapped sideways across her chest. The girl moves closer and Salazar whispers something into her ear as she bends her head down. Within a few seconds she extracts a small see-though plastic bag from her fannypack and hands it to Salazar before taking off. He holds the little bag, which has a few bright pink pills in it, in front of him, before he throws it at Rio.

Beth plucks it out of the air before Rio has a chance to grab it. “We know what you make of it,” she replies, waving the bag in the air. 

“Maybe you should try it,” Salazar suggests.

“Maybe I will,” Beth shoots back, as she tucks the bag into her bra. “But that ain’t what we here for, are we now?”

And it annoys the hell out of her, Salazar keeps looking at Rio every time she says something. He just keeps up his indifferent face to him though. 

“Forty’s too much,” Salazar concludes. 

“No it isn’t,” Beth says immediately. “Almost half the ingredients of your product comes through our places or our distribution lines. It seems pretty fair to us.” And she feels more confident and straightens her composure. Even though Rio apparently seems to feel like this is the best opportunity to put his hand lazily on her hip, which she tries to not even recognize, she keeps looking Salazar in the eye. 

“And if your freezer-contact is giving you trouble, we could cover that as well,” she continues the negotiation. “No one is going to question our business if we choose to expand.”

Salazar looks away from both of them, looking into the distance of the outdoors that’s visible from the windows. He’s obviously crunching down on his numbers. He looks back at them. “I need some time to call some people,” he says. 

Rio just nods and stands up, pulling Beth up with him. He leans into her, his mouth close to her ear. “We can go to Lupe, she turning tables now,” he says. He entangles his hand with hers. 

“Sure,” Beth says politely to Salazar. 

Rio drags Beth along with him through the busy skybox towards the security office she was too familiar with. When they get there she recognizes Demon sitting there watching the monitors, and he’s accompanied by a chubby black woman with trimmed hair she has not met before. What she also recognizes is the gunshot hole she did to the window close to the stairs. She can’t help but smile a bit. 

“You didn’t replace the glass,” she says, only for Rio to hear. 

“Kind of a monument,” he replies smoothly. “Of _my_ teaching,” he adds smugly. 

“Really?” she belts out, offended, getting both Demon’s and the woman’s attention. 

Demon looks back, noting Rio and Beth’s presence, and lowkey rolls his eyes before getting his attention back to the monitors. “No trouble, boss,” he states. 

“Good,” Rio says, as he pulls Beth towards the door to the stairs. “Let’s go, momma,” he says, as he opens the door, letting in the sound of the hardstyle music. They stay on top of the stairs when Rio pulls the door closed. The beat of the music now drumming into their bones, but not as much as the attraction that vibes under her skin as Rio leans into her. He trails his hand from her ear to her neck, into her cleavage, and she closes her eyes when he dips into it, but he’s just extracting the bag with the pills. “Wanna try something?” he asks, waving the bag in front of her eyes. 

She doesn’t really know if she wants to, still contemplating it as he opens the bag. He takes out one pill, breaking it should be. 

And sure, she has tried _something_ in her lifetime. Alcohol, obviously. But she has done a bit of hash and weed in high school and a some in her few college years. And aside from her one time try into some mushrooms, which she didn’t like at all and in hindsight wasn’t even sure was the psychedelic kind, that really was the limit of her drug experience. But Rio has seemed fine after his dose from Salazar, and she was sure he wouldn’t let her do something that was bad, so she was pretty tempted. 

“I don’t know if I should,” she says. “No deal yet,” she emphasizes. 

Rio doesn’t hold back and puts a quarter of pill onto his tongue. He restrains himself from taking it into his mouth, and she stares at it for a few seconds. And, yes, she is tempted to just reach out and take it from him that way. But instead she takes another quarter from the palm of his hand and pops it into her mouth. She holds out her glass to him.

Rio sniggers, and clinks his glass with hers when they both take a little gulp and down their pills. “He’ll cave either way,” he says, as he takes her hand again. 

Beth doesn’t feel any kind of buzz yet, but let Rio walk her down the iron stairs, the sound of her heals sounding defining into her ears over the beat of the music. And she now starts to take in her surroundings again. Obviously she has been in this space before, but now the empty tropical pool is inhabited by hundreds of party people moving to the beat. Even without any effect from the drug, the neon paint on many of the visitors move like blurry waves of color. At the far end she can see, what she presumes to be Lupe, a woman behind the turntables. And behind her is an impressive décor of a devil breathing fire to the beat of her drums. Beth feels a loving flash bubbling up inside of her for the flames shooting out of the canons – and she thinks she might start to feel something after all. 

They descend from the stairs onto the VIP deck, that isn’t all that crowded. But the people down there are moving like a dark sea in front of her, only lightened by the many colored spotlights and occasional stroboscope. And it is a bit of a blur to Beth, all these impressions crashing down onto her all at once. Not for the drug, she doubts it kicks in that fast, it’s more that she tries to comprehend the vibe of the room. But she’s pulled into reality because Rio pulls her into a high chair next to him in front of the bar. He orders them drinks, but she’s still looking around them in awe. 

Rio lays a hand on top of hers, dragging her attention back to him. “You good?” he just asks, as the bartender puts their drinks in front of them.

“I’m good,” Beth replies, taking the bourbon into her hand, sipping it leisurely. “Your sister seems to please the crowd,” she notes. 

Rio looks at her smugly. “It’s a family trait.”

Beth scoffs, putting her drink down. “Is it now?” she laughs. “I seem to recall many non-crowd-pleasing moment from you in my recent life, though.”

“Well, maybe I don’t care about your crowd,” he says, sipping his own drink.

And she _knows_. Every time Ruby and Annie had received their bags of money, it had always been one of Rio’s boys who delivered it to them. Or they had made them go to the warehouse of the day of the drop. Unlike for her. She told them she had received the same treatment, but it had almost always Rio who had given her the fake cash. Most of the times he had come to her with her share, some of the times he had texted her to come to a separate place to pick it up. 

After Rio had shot Dean it had taken a bit of time for him to do the runs with her again, but he had done it anyway. He had showed her that he was a person beyond the cardboard Latino drug lord she might thought he was, exposing her to his son to her. Which she couldn’t deny drew him more to her than his believe in her potential. It had been defining. Maybe even more than he realized. 

He wasn’t just this enigma that she was attracted to anymore, he was a person. Which frightened her even more, but also drew her in to a ridiculous level. And it wasn’t just that she realized he was a person, she realized she was a person as well. A person with feelings with wants and needs. And even though she didn’t really know what that meant, she knew it was it was more than the person she had been viewed as. Something beyond that. 

“Well, they care about me, so you should care,” she bites back. 

“Don’t I take care of you?” he replies.

And, for the love of god, how do you reply to that?

“I know you do,” she replies, but she doesn’t really know what that means. And she’s not really sure he even knows it. “I just,” she starts, unsure. Mostly unsure how to convey this message, not even sure she wants to open up. She’s a bit shy. “You tried to embarrass me,” she says, accusingly. And she’s serious about it, she hated that he played up their tryst with Annie and Ruby. 

“Yeah, well you cut me dead now, didn’t you baby girl,” he shoots back. Which is also not untrue, now that she has a chance to think about it. Because she definitely tried to not acknowledge their, ehem, _meetup_ with Annie and Ruby. At least not until she was called out upon it by her sister in the alley. But Rio doesn’t know any of the cheating, and she plans on keeping it that way if she can. It’s none of his business. Even though she’s pretty sure he knows there’s plenty of domestic trouble at in her household. 

“I don’t,” she says. “I don’t ignore you. You’re very present in my life. And honestly,” she signs, as she slumps into the barstool, “I just don’t know what this is. Not now, not ever, actually. It’s all very confusing.” And she leaves him at that. Mostly because she can’t give him anything more. 

But she feels, she feels all the things. And from the look of him it is exactly the same. But she can’t define if it is him or the drugs or anything beyond that. She just knows that this is more than just business. But she’s also not sure to address that with him. It’s a shaky ground she doesn’t want to thread. Being business partners is still number one, the only connection she can easily define, beyond their personal issues. Or non-issues, or whatever it is.

“Can we check on Lupe?” Beth asks. The music is more appealing to her now. Not the sound of it, but the vibe, the layering of the tracks are almost visible to her. She’s starting to like how it feels. 

Rio smiles smugly at her. “You wanna check out my sister?”

Beth scrunches up her face. “Ew, don’t make that gross.” She hops off the chair and grabs his hand. The skin on skin contact riling her up far more than she had anticipated. “C’mon, can we?” she asks, as Rio steps down slowly from his chair. “Or we have to get back to Sal?”

“Nah,” Rio says, and straightens his grip on her hand. “He’ll call me when he’s ready,” he elaborates. And he pulls her through the slim crowd into a side-door. When he closes the door to the hallway the sound is almost completely gone, reduced now to a low humming noise from outside. The hallway is plain and empty, a few props and decoration stacked along the sides, the white-tiled walls only lightened by a few TL-pipes in a dark orange color. 

They’re alone. 

Beth looks into his eyes, but he’s deflecting. So she reaches out her hands and palms his cheeks with her hands, his beard hair sending more than nice vibes through her hands. It’s loaded, this moment, she physically feels it pulling her down, like lead is tied to her limbs. She can’t go on unless he looks at her, so she slides her right hand down, putting her thumb on his chin, moving his hand just a tad bit down so he has to look at her. 

But he refuses to open his eyes. And it’s probably just a few seconds, but it feels like hours, before his eyelids open with the slowest of paces. 

“What do you want?” he drawls, as they lock eyes.

She stares back at him, longingly. Not answering. 

“You wanna finish what we started?” he says, leaning in, brushing his lips against hers. 

She pulls back from that touch, but not removing her hands. He licks his lips, and seems offended. 

“I—yes. But not _that_,” she says. “Not while we’re like this.”

Rio crowds her against the wall then, without resistance. He puts his hand on her hip, gripping her through her dress. Beth lets out a low keen as her back hits the wall behind her, squirming against his grip. He leans in to put his lips against her neck, licking the spot he sucked before on the roof. “You want that?”

Beth let her left hand travel from his cheek along his neck towards the neckline of his dress shirt. She strokes her thumb on the skin of his clavicle up to where the bird tattoo on his neck starts. And at this point she’s not even sure if this is real life, or the fantasy that comes with the drug, but she just wants to feel him. “I already gave you 60 percent,” she says, as he slowly attacks her neck with his mouth, roaming his hand on her hip. 

He smiles against her neck. “How ‘bout you give me a 100. Just for now,” he murmurs, pushing her up against the wall. 

She smiles coyly. “Maybe eighty?” she says, and he immediately moves his hand from over her dress to under it, cupping her ass. 

He chuckles. “Maybe eighty,” he repeats, as his right hand travels to under her dress, cupping her through her underwear, feeling her damp center. He strokes her lazily over the fabric as she moves against his touch. 

“Eighty sounds good,” she barely gets out of her mouth, before he attacks her neck again. His right hand rips her panties down roughly, and she pushes them down further way, leaving them around her left ankle. His hand immediately goes to her bare center, stroking her, finding her soaked. He moans against her, not completely surprised, but not expecting that either. 

Beth feels riled up, confident, ready for what’s next. She reaches her hand out to his bulging slacks. They look at each other, both their pupils dilated beyond normal arousal, beyond what they had in the bathroom. They make quick measure of his belt and the buttons and zipper on his pants, it’s a frenzy, and it feels even more like it, the drug enlarging their longing for each other. 

She reaches out to cup his member in her hand, something she hasn’t done before in the bathroom. But it feels just as good, touching his soft skin as he pushes into her hand. She guides him towards her, but he holds back. First reaching out to feel her, wanting to know she’s ready through the touch of his fingers. And he grunts lowly when he feels she is more than ready, sliding his fingers through her folds. And he takes a rough grip on her hips, and pushes her against the wall, looking into her eyes before continuing any action. 

“I want it,” she merely says. 

And it’s enough for him to line himself up and push into her, her head immediately thrown back against the wall, moaning her approval. He slowly moves into her more and more. 

“Was gonna ask if you wanted it,” she starts, as he pushes into her fully. He closes his eyes, enjoying to fully fill her. “But that’s obvious,” she says. 

They don’t talk anymore from that point on. Beth still has her left hand on his cheek as he settles on kissing her neck, her right hand grappling on his back, trying to either grab him, or stroke him, or anything else that gives her the right vibes as the humming of the music drums trough her veins. 

“I love,” she moans, biting his neck, as he bottoms her nicely, the way she wants it. “I love the way you do that,” she barely gets out as he moves up his speed, traveling down one hand to touch her clit, lazily circling it with his thumb. It’s not enough, but it’s pushing her as he bottoms her so good. His face scrunches up, barely maintaining focus, restraining himself painfully from totally losing it within her. He wants her to cum first, and he’s pushing that, his touch almost burning her skin, but thrumming through all of her, probably more because of the X. Because she knows it isn’t love, but she sure feels like this is what the electric jolts shooting through her limbs could be. 

And that thought pushes her over the edge, contracting around him. And he takes a few more pushes but then he comes inside her, slumping against her, breathing heavily, much like herself. And he’s still inside of her when he leans his forehead against hers, them breathing in each other’s breath. And even though she wants this moment to take a million years, it doesn’t. 

“No more than sixty,” she breathes. 

And he chuckles. No. He laughs. He laughs from deep inside his chest, a friendly and warm laugh. And she feels him inside her when he does. “Yeah,” he drawls, as he pulls out. And she can’t help but whimper at the loss of him. “No more than sixty,” he repeats as he tucks himself inside his pants. 

Beth leans against the wall, pulling up her underwear again. He puts a hand flat against the wall next to her, leaning into her closely. 

“So, how ‘bout him,” she says, still getting back her breath. “What does he want?”

“He’s probably pushing 50k now. Trial runs,” Rio answers. 

“A month?” she asks, getting her breath back. And really, she has no idea. She knows the base products she and Rio provide for Salazar, and she knows to which locations it goes, but from there it’s a whole dark area between that and that she knows they get about 70% back to the port, and not for national distribution.

Rio laughs again. “A week,” he replies. 

Beth’s eyes widen. She doesn’t know a whole lot about XTC, but unfortunately – or fortunately – she has a close relative who has used these things from time to time, and she knows that these thing sometimes go for 10 dollars apiece. Probably less now that they’re producing in the US and don’t have the border to limit them. “So what are we looking at?” 

“He’s now selling ‘about a million dollars a week to customers. Probably wants to go to 100k now. In time, he moves again to 200k. That’s what his big boutiques do in Canada,” Rio explains. He retracts his hand from the wall, giving her some distance. 

Beth smooths down her clothing. “And are we cool with that?” she asks. To her it seems like a pretty big risk to expand like that. 

Rio looks like he’s cool, but she knows him better than that. “We can do the double. For now at least. The chloric acid shouldn’t be a problem when we expand. Even the PMK isn’t an issue if he pulls through, I trust my people at the port.”

“So, what’s the problem?” she asks, as the watches the lines in his face deepen. 

“He’ll want us to get rid of the waste,” Rio says confidently. “And we don’t wanna draw that extra attention. I dun mind investing in my middle men, but I don’t need them bottom feeders. They unreliable.”

It's a lot to take in for Beth, she leans her back against the wall as she calculates the numbers and risks in her head. Rio has a lot of people working for him that barely know a thing. Young kids that do money runs. Single moms hiding stacks of money. War veterans running front stores. But most of them have been there a long time, or have been vouched for, they’ll have to bring in a bunch of new people. New people they don’t know. “So that’s why you want 40, right?”

“We want forty,” he shoots back. “I’ll not be just putting us on the line, but everyone down from there. Our books are good for the supplies, but if one of them pups or junkies gets caught on a waste run they’ll sell out. It’s a big risk he’ll want to dump on us.”

They’ve both come down from their high by now, and Rio takes her hand to guide her down the hallway. Beth stops in her tracks and retracks her hand though. “So what are we going to do?” she asks. And truth to be told, she is a bit scared. She gets all the bad case scenario’s flashing through her head: losing her kids, losing her business with Rio, losing this life. It seems so far away from the counterfeiting and the pharmacy. 

It's a question that takes Rio a few seconds to recollect before he looks her into the eyes again. “We’ll handle it,” he says. “It’s just a flip in the game.”

And he seems so casual about it. But on the other end, he has someone to care for as well, and that pushes her over the edge. She doesn’t know if his ex is the best parent for his child, but in the very least she trusts Dean to be a father to their kids. And if that is the low bar, this seems like the way to go. There isn’t a way back anyway now, is there? 

“So, how about that family business you’ve got going on here,” she smiles back at Rio. And he takes her hand again to guide her down the hallway to where the music happens. And she can’t define if what she feels is the thrill of the potential deal, or their tryst or whatever there was before their indulgence. But it’s not just business as usual. 

### CONTAINER

Beth looked at herself in the mirror of the en suite bathroom while she had put on the powdery pink dress. It had a low cut at the top, a high cut in the front at the bottom up to a little above her knees, and with a longer train in the back. They were about an hour away from the rehearsal dinner, and she was going to have to deal with presenting Rio as her boyfriend, a feeling that downed on her like an icy water shower. At first it was fun, but now it just seemed like a terrible decision. She hadn’t been lying when she said that most people hadn’t met Dean, or even knew about him. But Wendy, and Marissa in extension, did knew about him. So she had to explain to some people that she and Dean were apart, which wasn’t a scenario she had been looking forward to. 

Beth pulled herself together and exited the bathroom into the bedroom. “It’s alright, right?” she said, not really posing it as a question.

Rio was on the phone though, but locking eyes with her when she presented herself. “Let him on the phone tomorrow at like eleven,” he said while he checked her out, clearly now more engaged with her than with his conversation. “Make it eleven thirty,” he followed up. Rio wrapped up his conversation and put his phone down. He was also dressed, but a little more casually than she expected him for the wedding itself. He was in a light grey suit with a white tee underneath it. 

“You look ready, momma,” he said. His gaze traveled up and down her body, not hiding what he actually thought of her looks.

Beth held out her arm for him to take. “I am,” she replied a confident as she could. She pulled out her phone and put her Facebook page on private, just in case someone decided they were going to write something on her wall. 

“You worrying?” he said, as he locked arms with her. She quickly put her phone back in her clutch. “You look great,” he provided, but it didn’t really boost her confidence. They exited their room into the hallway, but Beth was hesitant. She closed the door with a sigh, feeling completely drained of the excitement she had felt leading up to this wedding. 

“It’s not that,” she said, turning to face him. “It’s just,” she said, her gaze drifting away from his. He reached out and lifted her chin lightly with his index finger. Beth closed her eyes a few seconds before opening them again. “You know that part of your life that’s not affected by the parts that sucked? That’s this for me, nothing’s broken here. Not yet,” she nearly whispered. 

At first Rio smiled compassionately to her, almost like he understands, before putting a hand on her shoulder. “Baby, these people are all assholes,” he said calmly before breaking into an almost mocking laughter. 

Beth pulled away from his touch. “_You’re_ an asshole!” she hissed, and stomped off towards the elevator. “Can’t you be considerate for one single time?” She angrily pushed the button of the elevator a bunch of times, even though it lit up the first time. It only took a few seconds, but Rio is soon standing next to her. He just looked at her, and waited for her. 

Beth made a scene of throwing up her hands. “I know they’re all assholes,” she shot back under her voice, tired, and fully aware on which floor they’re at. A fact which Rio obviously forgot about, or deliberately decided not to care who heard. “Can’t you just act like they’re not?” she asked sincerely. 

Rio shifted on his feet, grabbing his jaw with one hand, staring into the reflecting gold surface of the elevator. Beth looked at him through the reflection, and he found her eyes, looking like was trying to see something in them. “Why you care?”

“Why do you care why I care?” she asked back, as the elevator pinged. The doors slid open and they silently stepped into it. Rio leaned back against the wall, Beth fumbled with her clutch. 

He looked sideways at Beth. “You still wanna be her then?” he asked. 

Beth looked up. “Who?”

Rio smirked. “_Bethie Marks_,” he imitated with a girlish undertone, like how Marissa had greeted Beth earlier in the hallway. 

It was really hard to hold back, so after a few seconds Beth snorted, which diffused into a wide smile upon her face. “Please, I don’t even know who that is anymore.”

Rio pushed himself from the wall and held out his arm again. “So, what you wanna do ‘bout that Elizabeth?”

Beth didn’t answer him, but she took his arm as the elevator arrived at the first floor, the doors opening into the main hallway. When they had first arrived Beth had been zo taken aback by the violent force of the luxury, that she had hardly focused on the details when they had registered. But even though she was still royally convinced that this place was completely over the top, she could appreciate the craftmanship that had went into the design. The walls and ceilings were shiny dark wood, combined with an abundance of gold details as well as larger furniture. The swirly dark blue carpet finished they exorbitant look they were obviously going for. 

A high-pitched chuckle tore Beth from her thoughts, and when she looked for the sound she saw Marissa leaning against a golden pillar, back turned towards them, holding a cellphone to her ear. “I ran into her in the hallway earlier, and you’ll never believe what she brought.” 

Rio’s eyes twinkled when Beth looked sideways to check out his reaction. He silently smiled and shook his head, obviously smug that he had been spot on with his observation from the get go. 

“Some gangster!” Marissa squeaked, flailing her arms. “No, it’s not her husband,” she gruffly said, dismissively. “A Latino with a throat tattoo wearing a Patek Phillipe.” There was some rumbling on the other end of the line. 

“That’s what I thought. Must be drugs. Or maybe he’s a rapper.”

Beth was so engulfed into listening to Marissa gushing over Rio that she failed to notice him stepping forward towards the maid of honor and tapping her on the shoulder. Marissa whipped around annoyed, her hand getting loose around her phone and letting it tumble onto the ground as she locked eyes with Rio. It took her a few seconds to compose herself, but she mustered up a forced smile. “How can I help you?” she barely got out without a stutter, as she picked up her phone. _“Hello?”_ could be heard from the speaker. “Let me call you back in a minute,” Marissa said, closing the call. 

“Yeah, could you point us to the gift table? Or you ain’t doing that tonight?” Marissa pointed at the main ballroom. “Mic also there? Might wanna spit some bars later,” he chuckled. 

“Really?” Marissa said, almost relieved. 

Beth moved towards Rio, putting her hand on his chest. “You sure you want to do that, honey?” she asked, putting her lips close to his ear. 

Rio pulled back a little, looking at Beth before returning his gaze back to Marissa. “Nah, I’m just messing with you,” he smiled. “Besides. I ain’t a rapper,” he said pointedly, not denying her other accusation. Beth heard that too and enlaced her fingers with his, urging him to come with her. 

Marissa narrowed her eyes at Rio, obviously making a mental note of this conversation. “I have to check on the kitchen,” she chirped, pulling out that damn clipboard again. “I’ll see you later,” she said, echoing Beth’s words, but this time Beth wasn’t so sure she was going to like that. Marissa turned on her feet an exited in the other direction before they could say a goodbye. 

As soon as Marissa turned the corner Beth hit Rio in the chest with her flat hand. “Stop being so _street_. You’re giving them a bad impression,” she hissed. 

“Should’ve put in my grill,” he joked, as he dragged he towards the ballroom. 

“You’re not funny.”

They stepped into the room, finding themselves on top of an exquisite balcony that had two stairs spiraling down to either side. Looking into the room they could see at least a dozen tables on the marble floor, draped with crispy white linen and each of them decorated with a beautiful flower arrangement. 

“So, what’s gonna happen tonight?” Rio asked, as they made their way down the stairs. 

“I thought you had your fair share of weddings?” she fired back. 

“Yeah. But the only rehearsal dinner I had was a backyard barbeque and a few drunk uncles roasting the groom.” And Beth wanted to ask so many question, first and foremost if that was a lead up to possibly his own wedding, but she pushed it down. Saving that gem for later. 

Beth hadn’t been able to see when they were still up on the balcony, but underneath was an actual string quartet providing the music instead of someone’s Spotify list connected to the boomboxes on the wall. She cleared her throat as they got in the greeting line for the bride and groom. “Well, as the schedule you received with the letter said,” she started. 

“Tossed that. Figured you’d remember all the details,” he said. 

She rolled her eyes at that, even though she hadn’t expected any different. “It’s just something casual tonight,” she said. 

Rio looked around the room just too long to provide all his feelings about the word ‘casual’. 

“As casual as privileged people can get,” Beth filled in. “Three course dinner, talks and homages from friends and more distant family. Old people awkwardly going through PowerPoint presentations, amateur reenactments of their first meeting by their cousins and a song by a drunk aunt who never had her big break,” she recited.

“Maybe Imma track back on that no-drinking rule,” Rio said with a smile, as they moved up in the line. 

“You sure? That last one was the highlight of her second wedding,” Beth smiled back. 

Just a few meters away were the bridal party. Wendy was wearing a long, light blue Greek style dress, which complemented her dark brown skin, her dark brown hair put up with glittery white flowers. And her soon to be husband Derek, at least fifteen years her senior, standing next to her wearing a white suit with a light pink dress shirt. And even though Beth had Rio with her at this wedding, Wendy and Derek seemed to be even more mismatched than them. Him looking like a friendly, dewy-eyed dad she had encountered many times at PTA gatherings – even though she knew Derek was the CEO of a big construction company that operated all through Canada - and Wendy looking a bit stern but friendly. 

They had gotten in front of the line and Beth was pulled into a hug by Wendy, who’s tired mask of a face seemed to shatter into a million pieces when faced with her old friend. Unlike with Marissa, Wendy seemed to actually exude a warmth to her greeting. “I’m so glad you made it!” Wendy said. “And who’s this?” she immediately followed up as she checked out Rio.

Rio held out his hand, and Wendy took it with both of hers. “This is Rio,” Beth said, as he smiled curtly. A bit taken aback that his own observation of this charade might be proven wrong. “My… boyfriend,” she followed up, with a hint of doubt. 

“You sure he ain’t your daddy?” Wendy asked sultry, winking obscenely at Beth, who felt a blush spread through her chest like rapid thunder. In the meantime Rio’s hand shot up to cover his mouth as he tried to contain his laugh. 

“Yes, I’m sure,” Beth said, as she felt her face flushing as well. 

Rio caught of a tattoo covering Wendy’s upper right arm; two bands completely encircling her skin, one a bit thicker than the other. “Milwaukee Junction?” Rio asked Wendy, eyeing her arm. She arched an eyebrow, more out of curiosity than out of surprise. 

“Mcdougall-Hunt,” she replied. “Wasn’t too bad back then,” she followed up. 

“Chaldean Town,” he said. “Still bad,” he laughed. 

Beth noticed Wendy laughing with him. And this, honestly, wasn’t a friendly conversation she could join in actually. Even though Beth couldn’t say she grew up with a lot of fortune, it was way out of these neighborhoods in Detroit. They just had different problems to deal with, and these two now seemed to be some kind of kindred spirits because they were from the projects – and she wasn’t sure yet if this was going to play out in her favor. 

“You know Beth and I met in community college?” Wendy asked Rio. Which was yet another topic Beth didn’t want to get into. “Derek, congratulations!” she injected way too joyful as probably one of Wendy’s aunts moved on from him. Beth grasped his hand and kissed him two times on the cheek. “So good to see Wendy settling with a guy like you,” she followed up. 

Wendy and Rio exchanged a look which wasn’t at all what Beth was going for, thank goodness it went all over Derek’s head. “I’m so glad to have met her, she’s such a adamant to my life. I didn’t think I’d find someone after my first split, most women just see money, but Wendy really sees me,” Derek elaborated. “I’m so glad you found the time to attend our wedding, this really means a lot to her,” he added. Beth smiled her most friendly smile at him in response. 

“Glad to meet you man,” Rio said, as he took Derek’s hand. “Always good to see Detroit moving up,” he joked, only he didn’t, it seemed like he meant it. 

“He chased me, though,” Wendy said honestly. “I was still married to Troy when we met, but we were already apart, if you know what I’m saying.”

“I know,” Beth said, cutting in Rio who was already fired up to do his say. “Dean and I are still working things out legally, but we’re getting there eventually. Kids, right?” she said. Which really wasn’t far from the truth, the whole reason she got into business with Rio was to provide some kind of stability for her family. And in reality that stability was shaky at best at the moment, her relationship with Rio maybe even one of the most defined at the moment, and she didn’t want to mess that up, regardless of how weird and messy it was to begin with.

“You can sit at table three,” Wendy told them, immediately faced with Beth’s surprised face. “I’ll let Marissa know you moved,” she added, thinking what she saw was Beth’s immediate discomfort at dealing with her maid of honor. 

Rio entwined his fingers with Beth’s. “Good. I wanna know all about your Kappa Kappa Gamma time. Sounds like you two had some wild years.”

“Please,” Wendy scoffed. “We were way too cool for a sorority. TP’ed them bitches though,” she added, laughing. 

Beth grimaced a little – at the time that had felt like the best idea, now she would definitely not recommend. She tugged Rio’s hand, motioning for him follow her as the said a short bye to Wendy and Derek, before other people took their place in the thank you line. 

“So is it fair to say you’re friends from the hood?” Beth asked Rio, as they faced the table with fancily wrapped gifts. Rio put a hand on hers as she started to dig into her purse. He extracted an envelope from his inside pocket and put it into the see through vault that was situated on the table, already filled up halfway. 

“Guess so,” he said. Giving her nothing. 

“We just got promoted because of your hoodness,” she said, hinting to the table they would probably be sharing with Wendy and Derek. 

Rio looked around them, still spotting the long line of congratulations behind them, grabbing Beth’s hand and dragging her towards one of the outside balconies. She just let herself be dragged along for this. “Really? Thought it was you and her being crazy broads in college,” he fired back, a note of amusement in his voice. He locked the doors before turning back to her.

Beth crossed her arms across her chest, annoyed that he found that so damn funny, her back straightening as she looked at him seriously now. “So what’s going to go down tomorrow?” she asked. 

“Flipping our game,” he said nonchalantly.

“I get that, that’s the only part you’ve made clear so far. Apart from me being me, and you being whatever fake ID you have on you for this. Do I still call you Rio? What am I doing? Who are we? What is our business?” she went at him, rapid fire style. 

Rio crowded her, laying his hands on her hips, not too intimate for people from outside to see, but more than intimate for her. She looked down at his hands, swallowing a bit too slowly, before returning her attention back to him, looking him in the eyes. “You my fiancé. My business partner,” he said, leaning into her. “But play it dumb a bit, I know you ain’t, but I need them to think it,” he said, still closing more space between them.

“Why?” she asked into his ear. “What are we moving?” She unfolded her arms from across her chest, putting a hand flat on his chest, pushing him back softly, making him look at her again. 

“He moving his pharmacy across the border, cuts a lot of costs. I’m a legit investor in the port, and he needs another excuse for the chloric acid – last guy got busted, it a difficult product,” Rio explained. 

“Chloric acid’s illegal?” she asked. 

“Nah, just on a watchlist if you import a whole lot of it.”

“So how you want to explain that? Blackmailing some kind of university bobo to import that?” she asked with a grin. 

Rio took some distance, carefully studying her face. “Can’t, mami, too risky. I got you for that,” he said, like that explained it all. 

“What am I there for?” she said, repeating his indifferent tone. This was infuriating, he was acting like this was nothing, like she not risked a lot with possibly putting her name on one of his businesses. 

“You my trophy wife chasing her dream of establishing her handbag line,” he said joyfully. 

“How?” she asked, exasperated. 

Rio leaned back against the door, gripping his jaw in that annoying thinking pose again. “I got a factory,” he said, without any context. “They import the chloric acid to clean leather to a workable fabric. You the face of it, selling it through a legit store. My guys running the extra import through a back window. We good?”

Beth had to take a few minutes to process this. And she can’t deny to herself she’s a little bit insulted that he wanted to play her as the dumb fiancée, but she does get it in what he wanted his scheme to be. But it seemed like a giant risk to her, she thinks Turner is kind of off her case, but if he or his guys were the ones following them, this could put her on the line again. “Who’s name is this on?” she asked, after a few minutes of consideration. 

“Miguel and Victoria Ruiz,” he answered, after a considerable amount of seconds. 

“Both of them?” she asked. And she knew he’s got some ID with his face and fake name on it, but she hasn’t seen any with hers. She wanted to believe he had got her covered, but truth to be told, she can’t be sure. 

Rio unlocked the door and held out his hand, effectively ending this discussion in his own way. “Just be you tomorrow,” he said decidedly, while he waited for her to process it all. “But don’t take any BS from me either,” he added. Which sounded like just a little trust, but was probably a lot of trust. “You my girl, aight?”

Beth beelined for the door and pushed it closed with a little too hard of a push, he wasn’t just going too sweet talk her into this plan of his. “You’re also responsible?” she asked, not backing down on that. It was one thing to be both on the bill, even though it was their other identities, but she didn’t want it to be just her. That was too risky, even she as a newbie knew that. And she had a feeling that he underestimated her because of her inexperience. 

There was a big pause, but he seemed to cave soon. “We both responsible,” he said. 

“I want that paperwork,” she shot back. 

“I’ll send it to you now,” he responded, as he whipped out his phone. Texting whoever was responsible for that. And sure thing she got a mail to her mail address about it. 

“Don’t I get a leather business email address?” she asked coyly. “Being a partner and all?” Rio didn’t look up from his phone though. “What’s it called anyway?” she asked more forcefully, trying to get his attention again, really stressing about how to actually sell this business to a stranger kingpin now. 

Rio behind him, noticing a shift in behavior behind him in the ballroom. “The ceremony’s starting,” he said, looking back at her, as she looked over his shoulder to see people take their places at their respective tables. 

“Nice cover,” she replied smugly. “You’re not off the hook though,” she said, moving towards the door. And truthfully, I seemed like he just casually tried to dump a load of responsibility on her, and she just wasn’t having it. He could have told her this at any time in the past twenty-something hours, but he choose to do it now. And it kind of pissed her off, actually. It had just fired her up to down a bottle of bourbon, even though she knew that was a terrible decision. But it would serve him right.

He grabbed her hand swiftly, and pulled her against him. “Good,” he breathed into her ear, leaning his body into her. “Let’s play up our game for your friends,” he continued, “could be useful.”

Beth pulled away from him, almost insulted. “We’re not dragging my friends into this!” she blurted out. “They’re good people,” she said, as if that explained it all. 

“They better than you?” Rio asked, opening the door into the ballroom again, as he held out his hand for her. 

And if she was honest with herself, they weren’t _better_ than her. But as far as she knew they weren’t worse, even though she disapproved of Wendy’s life tactic of moving up in life through marriage, and Derek’s company that evicted poor people to build really expensive housing. And you know maybe he did have a point, but she wasn’t willing to go that route just now. “I don’t know,” she replied innocently, even though she knew he wouldn’t fall for that. She took his hand regardless, as she stepped over the threshold. 

It seemed like he sensed her doubt. “Let’s just feel it out,” he replied.

And she could work with that. “Let’s do that,” she replied, as walked ahead of him and guided them to table three, which was the table with Wendy and Derek, obviously. Rio pulled out her chair for her to sit down, and she was oddly flattered by that. She was seated next to Wendy’s mother, and Rio took his seat next to what she presumed was Marissa’s husband. 

“I’m Paul,” he introduced himself joyfully to them. Paul was wearing a well fitted dark blue suit, looked well put together from the neck down, but his head was red and puffy and he looked sweaty and nervous. They both shook his hand and introduced themselves. “You do tattoos?” he asked, indicating Rio’s throat tattoo.

Rio laughed lowly. “Nah, man, but I got some addresses in Detroit if you want some,” he offered. And Beth hadn’t seen that much of Rio’s tattoos, but she had caught some on his shoulders, and they were way better done than his most visible asset. 

Paul laughed nervously. “I’m okay,” he stuttered. “I’m still apologizing for a tribal on my upper right arm for the past fifteen years.”

Rio just put his arm around Beth. “That’s hard, bro,” he said. “Maybe she ain’t the right woman then,” he joked, eyeing Beth in the process. 

“We can’t all be so lucky,” Paul replied, diverting his head as Marissa plopped down in the seat next to him, looking jittery and rigid at the same time. She waved her hand at a woman with a microphone on the stage, who nodded curtly and an older black gentleman took the stage.

And Beth locked eyes with Rio, as she felt his hand on her thigh over her dress, and she kind of realized that Paul’s remark might be truth.

### CROCODILE

The following minutes pass as if they were a hundred years. They hear a door get unlocked, shooting, and the door getting locked again as they heard shots fire again. It was clear that both Salazar and his guy and Rio’s guys had no idea what was going on as they whipped out their guns, waiting for their new occupants to enter the room. 

“Just get him in there!” Beth heard a stern, but a little tense, female voice command some else. “Close this up!” she continued. 

As they heard what was probably shaky hands on a lock, they were greeted by a young blond woman in a regular police outfit, dragging along an even younger tinted guy with a clear shot in the thigh, his light jeans drenched with blood. Salazar immediately put his gun away and hurried to the guy, cupping his jaw with his hands, patting his cheek with his hand. “Daniel!” he coaxed, for the first time she had met him sounding genuine and real. 

While Sal busied himself with the young boy, three more people entered the room. Carlos, with his gun in his hands, accompanied with a fit thirtysomething woman, also with her gun at the ready. And a plump young black woman with cropped black hair, holding a set of keys. 

“Shit hit the fan,” Carlos provides, as if they hadn’t already noticed. 

“No shit,” Rio huffs, pulling against his restraints. Cisco took the opportunity to cut Rio loose as Sal and his remaining guy focused on the bleeding Daniel. Rio rubs his wrists as soon as he had the opportunity. He locks eyes with Carlos. “Who the fuck are out there?”

“Dunno. Some cops,” he replied. 

The blond woman pipes her head up, tearing her gaze away from the door that’s still being rattled from the utside. “They aren’t some cops. Mike got shot!” she fires back at him. “I saved your fucking life, asshole,” she accuses.

“Fine,” Carlos replies, with a heavy sigh, seeming abnormally calm compared to the other people who just piled into the room. “They ain’t normal cops. But they some kind of special forces though. That FBI guy was with them,” he explained, looking at Rio again.

In the meantime Sal and his guy were laying this Daniel on one of the bolted benches of the terrarium. His guy putting pressure on the wound. Rio, annoyed as he may be, shot Eddy a glance to head over there. Eddie gets the hint and puts his gun away, kneeling down at Daniels wound. Sal was going to put up a fight, but Rio locked eyes with his. “He know what he’s doing,” he says, receiving a look of understanding, and Sal took a bit of distance to let Eddy inspect the wound. 

Rio heads over to Beth to cut her loose from her bindings, while she was still trying to process what was going on. Turner was out there with some kind of force that was apparently not afraid to shoot a police guy, and so more than eager to shoot them than obviously. 

Salazar diverts his attention to the black woman now. “You got some kind of medical thing in here?” he asks, sincerely worried. 

“Yeah,” she stutters, in shock. “But it’s for reptiles obviously.”

Eddy stands up. “Don’t matter. Just show it,” he orders her. 

Beth watches every single person just drip down through the plastic barriers to what she remembered to be the main hall. Rio was still there with her, cutting through her tie wraps with a knife she saw him retract from his jeans. She shoves the plastic bindings from her wrists as Rio kneels down to cut her ankle restraints. “What the hell is going on?” she asks. “Is Turner on some kind of personal vendetta? Why would he shoot a cop?”

She hears Rio sigh behind her, as he cut her right ankle loose. “Dunno, mami. We knew he could be a risk,” he answers. She wriggles her leg, getting some feeling back into her foot again.

“Thought you and him were good?” she asks, as he cut her other foot loose. “Didn’t you have a deal?” He rises up and she hears him click the knife back before he walks to a place in front of her. She let her left hand fell and rubs her ankle. She looks at him from her place in the chair. 

“We was never good,” he says, looking into her baby blue eyes. “Was just all he had to get to Sal’s boss. Cartel and all. Getting’ to them other gangs past months was means to an end,” he explains, handing her the knife. He turns to her, exposing his upper right arm. “I need you to do sumthin’,” he says. 

Beth takes the knife with her right hand, and stands up on her two feet. She reaches out with her left hand, tracing his upper arm. Nothing surprising, until she thinks she feels a little lump under his skin. And even though the lighting in the place was pretty dark and ugly yellows, she could see a tiny bump. “He’s tracing you,” she concludes. “Does anyone know?” she immediately followed up, hissing it under her voice. 

“Some of ‘em,” he replies. “The ones I trust.”

“You didn’t tell me,” she replies. No, she pouts, much to her chagrin. She didn’t want it to sound like that. 

Rio smirks. “Did I had to?” he asks back. 

Beth replies by cutting his arm with the knife. He immediately hisses, but doesn’t pull back when she does. And she hates this, even though she had seen her share of bleeding limbs in her lifetime, but digging into someone’s arm from a deliberate cut was a first one actually. She pulls out what she expected was that chip, or the tracer, or whatever it was. It was a fascinating thing, she expected it would be a bleeping lights kind of thing, but it was just a dark pill or something. 

Rio takes it from her and just tosses it into the crocodile reservoir. He smirks. “Now he thinks I’m swimming,” he says. 

He's close, and the humidity between them wasn’t just the one that was natural to their environment of the reptile home, it was between him and her. And now she was getting really aware of her state of undress in this situation, while he was still in jeans and a wife beater. “I feel like I’m swimming,” she admits, closing the few space between them. And she just hugs him, just wanting to feel him close, feeling comforted now, and he answers her plea. 

Their embrace also seems to last a long time, while it probably lasts at most half a minute. Not in the least because the police girl peeks through the plastic separation, holding out some clothes. “Yeah, this Carlos guy asked me to bring this?” she says uncertain when she saw heir closeness. 

Beth untangles herself from Rio, taking the long khaki pants from her and putting them on. “What’s your name?” she asks the girl.

“I’m Emily,” she says, a bit shyly, holding her hand out. 

Beth takes her hand, smiling friendly. “I’m Beth,” she replies, shaking her hand.

“I kinda know,” Emily answers. “I’ve seen you associated with him,” she says, cocking her head at Rio. “Let’s not pretend we’re on the same team normally,” she adds grimly. 

Rio steps forward. “Normally we ain’t,” he says. “But we now though?” he asks – only Beth knows he’s not asking. He takes a place next to Beth. “I don’t kill cops for nothin’, you should know that if you been following me.”

“I know,” Emily replies fast – trying to appear confident. “You had my previous partner shot in the knee. Never worked since. Knew he was dirty though, had a lot of debt, easily swayed for a stack of cash. I’m not though.”

“We ain’t asking,” Rio says, with a bit of compassion actually. He sneaks his hand along Beth’s hip, pulling her closer. “But we the best you got now,” he merely states. 

“If I survive I will plead for your case,” she provides. And Beth at first had thought Emily had been in her early twenties, but now that they had talked she now presumed she was close or into her early thirties, she just had a young face. But she’s far too mature to be so young. 

“They shot Mike,” Emily says sternly. “I did not sign up for this for some other badge to shoot my partner,” she continues. “He has three kids,” she adds. 

“I’ll take care of it,” Rio says, in that tone Beth recognizes all too well: he means it. 

“I don’t want to die tonight,” she says, and it seemed genuine. 

“Let’s go help that guy out than,” he answers her. They seemed to have reached an understanding and Emily exits the room, going back to wherever Daniel was. 

Beth turns in Rio’s grasp on her hip. “You’re not going to take care of her?” she asks in a different tone, trying to sound indifferent, but she wasn’t.

His hands circle her around her ass, pulling her against him. “I might,” he says softly against her lips. “What’s it to you?”

Beth swallows soundly. “She saved Carlos,” she says. “And if she can provide for Daniel that can be in our favor,” she adds, trying to push business. And he’s contemplating this, but obviously not making a decision just yet. Just going through all of the scenario’s in his head for now. “What do you want to do?” he asks.

“She seems like someone who has something on the line,” she replies. “Much like Salazar has though,” she adds. “He’ll need Eddy to take care of that boy.”

“That boy his son,” Rio says. And she can’t help but spiral into that one day some strange dude might be responsible for taking care of Kenny, even though he’s twelve now. But if she’d let him into her dealings, and even though she wants to keep him out – wants to be out by then, it could be him. And it chills her to the bone. In a bad way.

Rio bends down and picks up his hoodie, hands it to Beth. She takes it from his gratefully, zipping it close over her top. “Let’s go,” she says, walking ahead of Rio towards the main hall. She pushes aside the plastic flaps, making a noise as she enters. The hallway is wide, brightly lightened by overhanging lamps. The walls are lined with terrariums with lizards, snakes and other slimy creatures. Beth looks around, and Rio follows her line of vision as her eyes finds Salazar sitting next the Daniel who’s sprawled onto an iron trolley while Eddy and Emily work on him. He doesn’t tears away his attention from his son, and Beth takes the opportunity to pass by Carlos and have him hand something over from his pocket. 

Beth walks towards Sal and taps him lightly on the shoulder, As he tears his attention away from Daniel for just a second, Beth pulls her arm back. Salazar barely has time to register what Beth is about to do as the iron knuckle duster on her hand collides with his nose, sending a sickening cracks throughout the room. 

Salazar grabs his face, blood already gushing from his nostrils. 

“You broke my nose, bitch!” he hurls out, more surprised than angry she notes. 

Beth shakes her hand, the impact being painful on her knuckles as well, but nothing close to the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction that rolls over her. Beth smiles, and looks at Salazar. “Oh, I’m sorry. You took my gun. And I believe you said something about smacking a bitch it I can’t put them down.”

Rio steps closer, chuckling, taking her hand into his, inspecting her for wounds as he removes the duster. He finds Salazars eyes as the other man recomposes himself. “Bet you don’t feel to good about being fucked over by her as well as you think you would, huh.”

Salazar stares back at him angrily, whipping the blood away with his dress shirt. 

Rio stares around the room, that has gone awfully quiet save for Emily’s tending for Daniels wounds. 

“So. How ‘bout a plan B?” he states.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Use drugs safely people. Get it tested, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLZKrEUGx74&has_verified=1 Don't take stuff from strangers. 
> 
> And let's hope S3E1 is all we want it to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Get into a new fandom they said, it’ll be fun they said. So as these things go I was dead set on writing some one-shots… guess what. I created a monster that's a multichaptered WIP, these are the introduction chapters.
> 
> Edit: Just to clear something up. This is one longer fic, told through three different storylines. ;)


End file.
